


Lost Your Way

by theDukeofEarp



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, If someone has better idea for tags let me know, Wayhaught - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-01-09 06:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12270774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theDukeofEarp/pseuds/theDukeofEarp
Summary: What if Nicole arrives to Purgatory a year late? Officer Nicole Haught transfers from the Chicago Police to the Purgatory Sheriff’s Department on the suggestion of a mysterious stranger. Her work in the big city didn’t prepare her for the evils of this small town. Haunted by past mistakes, Officer Haught strives to find her way in this new world of supernatural happenings, and finds herself caught up in a fight that puts her life, and her love, on the line.





	1. Going to Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> If you take your whiskey with tacos and a side of doughnuts, then you've come to the right place. Please indulge yourself on this delicious fanfiction that I cooked up especially for Earpers with a hearty appetite! However, since this is a very Nicole-centric fic, there will be a noticeable lack of pickles. Enjoy!

Raindrops fell on a Thursday afternoon in November, beating the pile of upturned dirt into a slick barrow-mound. The service had been given with grace and dignity to a silent crowd of mourners. Their tears wet the ground long before the rain. Each and every one had been overcome with a desperate longing to believe their young lady had been taken to a beautiful and everlasting here-after. Head tilted into the rain, awash with guilt, the last mourner drowned in the weight of her remorse. This had been preventable. But she had failed in her duty to protect.

The rain stopped abruptly, and Nicole Haught opened her eyes to a blackness above. No, not blackness, but fabric. An umbrella? “It’s awful weather, to be out here like this.” Came a weathered voice from a weathered man. His wiry, grey scruff poked out from under an equally grey baseball cap. His drab look was complemented by jeans and a black, shabby trucker’s jacket he couldn’t be bothered to zip. Nicole hadn’t noticed his presence until he offered the umbrella. This man’s approach had been so silent, it was like he appeared out of nowhere. Silent or no, he looked like a nonchalant working man who was no stranger to local dive bars, except for his eyes. There was something elusive there. ‘More than meets the eye’ as some might say.

“Awful weather for awful times.” She said flatly, bringing her gaze to rest on top of the headstone’s inscription. She read it for the hundredth time.

“Family? Someone close?” he asked, gesturing towards the tombstone. She didn’t answer, and he didn’t expect her to. In any case he already knew the answer. “My wife’s down the way.” He pointed down the road. “Maribel. Today’s our anniversary, brought her favorites.” He waved a bundle of purple lilacs. “She was from New York, loved the damn things. Always got me sneezing though.” He smiled sadly and crunched his nose in emphasis.

With a sigh, he offered to let Nicole keep his umbrella. “I couldn’t rightly leave a lady out in weather like this, knowing it won’t let up anytime soon.” He said genuinely. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your visit, jus’ felt like you could get along better if you were dry.”

“No,” Nicole declined, turning her eyes from the grave to meet the gaze of this kind stranger. “I couldn’t possibly let you do that, you’ll catch your death of cold…” she choked, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at her accidental black humor.

“Well if you don’t mind the company, why don’t I wait here with you, and when you’re done you come meet my Maribel?” The corners of his eyes crinkled with a grandfather’s kindness. “She loves having visitors, quite the host, my Mari.” He chuckled. “Always making tea and those tiny sandwiches ‘fer guests. They were always too small though,” and Nicole let out a small laugh when he flexed his fingers out in front, “these man-hands were made ‘fer heartier fare.”

“And what work do you with those man-hands, mister…?” she asked, appreciating the simple conversation. Maybe she deserved it, or maybe she didn’t, but the universe had seen fit to send her a small reprieve. She would be foolish not to indulge.

“Oh, don’t mister me.” He shook his head in false reprimand. “I’m no one special. Jus’ call me Juan Carlo.” He said, ending the last vowel in a huff. “And you might be?”

“I’m Nicole, Nicole Haught.” She said, shaking his outstretched hand. “You know what, I think I’ve been here… long enough. I could use the walk. Can’t stay in one place forever.” Nicole shrugged uncomfortably and dug her hands deep into her overcoat. Juan Carlo obliged with a tilt of his head, and the two began plodding through the sopping grass.

“Life lets us find beautiful things,” he said wistfully into the mist, “and then it asks us to leave those things. We are blessed to be able to remember those things. But it’s easy to feel left behind.”

“Lost…” Nicole added.

“That’s a right way of saying it, Nicole. Lost. Sometimes, we feel like we’ve lost sight of our way. But sooner or later, someone or something comes along and reminds us of who we are. Where we’re meant to go. You jus’ gotta listen to what the world is telling you.”

“Wow, you should write a book.” She joked. “I’d read it.” Juan Carlo laughed as he navigated an extra large puddle, trying to keep his pant hems from soaking all the way through.

“I’ve never been one ‘fer writing. But I have found a way of speaking that people seem to relate with.” The two came upon a simple tombstone. Juan Carlo tenderly placed the lilacs at its base, fondly dragging his fingertips across the rain-slicked marble. “She was always telling me I had another calling, but the allure of machines got me in the end. I get to speak to a lot of folks this way anyhow.” He said proudly. “When people get broke down, lose their way, their first step is to call a tow. Then they get stuck with me the whole ride back, and they get their fair share of wisdom.”

The two stood side by side in the rain for a few minutes, soaking in moment of compassionate silence. “Juan Carlo,” Nicole broke the silence, “how do you make peace?” These last few weeks, months even, were riddled with regret. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept through the night.

“We all make mistakes, Nicole. We live with them. And we learn from them. Do this, and you’ll find your Way.” The mechanic said with a certain finality. She nodded, hanging onto his words with solemn gravity.

“Oh and Officer Haught, you dropped something.” Juan Carlo pointed to a folded envelope on the ground by her feet. Curiously, Nicole bent down to pick up the envelope. She didn’t remember any paperwork on her person. As her fingers closed around the surprisingly dry paper, her breath hitched in her throat and her eyes widened.

She was out of uniform, and definitely hadn’t mentioned her affiliation with the police.

Nicole snapped her eyes forward, only to find that Juan Carlo had vanished into thin air. Nicole Haught stood alone in the rain, holding the umbrella in front of a tombstone dated June 13th, 1893.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

“Officer Haught, are you certain you want to do this? I understand that recent events have been very… challenging. But I want you to know that you’ve earned your place on this team. Hell, you’ve earned it twice over. I’ve never had a rookie put out half the work you do, and you’ve handled it with flying colors. Your probationary period is up, and you can put that experience to good use here or in another District. You’d even have my endorsement for another Division here at the Bureau! Your work makes a real difference here.”

Captain Morris was the executive officer of Patrol District-1 at the Chicago Police Department. Officer Haught had arrived at District-1 only 18 months ago, and she outperformed all his new accessions by a wide margin. She had proven herself as reliable as some of his more senior officers, if not more so. Captain Morris tapped his fingertips in agitation as he reread Officer Haught’s request for lateral entry into the Purgatory Sherriff’s Department. Call it what you whatever you wanted; a lateral entry, a transfer; for all intents and purposes, his number one junior Officer was asking to resign.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought, sir.” Nicole stood firm in her police blues, meeting the Captain’s frustration head on. “I know it’s unconventional, but I need to make this change.”

“Please reconsider.” He exasperated in a last ditch plea, but he could see the obstinacy written in every inch of her posture. That characteristic determination was one of the reasons she was an incredible police officer. Officer Haught was driven, and outright stubborn, when confronted with obstacles. She could go so far with the CPD. But Purgatory, of all places? It was the sticks out there. Nothing but drunks and petty crime. Her talent would be squandered.

“Can I at least ask why? Is this about what happened at Central?” He leaned in on the last question, vying for any crack in her defenses. There was no reasonable explanation for his Officer’s resignation other than the incident at the Central Detention Center several months ago. If he could win her confidence and have an open conversation, maybe this could be turned around. And for a moment, a mere fraction of a second, the corners of her eyes creased. Then it was gone and replaced with the resolve that she wore as a standard part of her uniform.

“Captain Morris, the Purgatory Sheriff’s Department tried to recruit me out the Academy. I worked very hard this past year, and I’ve learned a lot here. Your confidence in my abilities is inspiring. But I need to transfer. I…” and the eye creases came back, “I want to re-establish myself somewhere with a clean slate. And I know the right place to do that is in Purgatory.”

Her words hung in the air. Morris accepted the finality of her tone and relented. “Alright Haught, I’ll run this up the chain. The Commander will be very upset to lose you, but if you’ve made up your mind then… I’ll see this through for you.”

“Sir, this means a lot. Thank you.” A little bit of the tension left her shoulders. “So you know the Sheriff there, Sheriff Nedley?”

“Yes, we graduated from the same class at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy. Worked our first few years in Bozeman. I got a taste of the city and wanted more, but Randy? He’s a simple guy. Wanted to keep the peace for decent folks with the least amount of effort required. I went east, and he went north. We keep in touch every now and again.” Morris grinned in false cheer. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot more from him now that my top junior cop is heading his way. He’ll never let me live it down.”

The two policemen smiled. Perhaps they didn’t understand each other, but their mutual respect was enough. They had each walked in fire and earned their brass. Captain Morris waved her out kindly, lifting his coffee mug and wishing he had spiked it to make this morning less awful. That cop walking out his door would be a hard one to replace.

“Officer Haught?” she turned back, her hand resting firmly on the doorjamb to the hallway. “I expect great things from you, you know. Just because you’re leaving CPD doesn’t mean you lose your edge. Got that?”

“Yes’sir, Captain Morris.” Nicole left him with a small nod of the head and closed his office door behind her as she left down the hall. She fingered the envelope folded in her pants pocket. Her hand was shaking. With the confrontation over, there was nowhere left to channel her energy.

“I respectfully request a transfer from CPD, District-1, to the Purgatory Sheriff’s Department.” She recited in her head in time with her footsteps. “I have received a job opportunity there with a start scheduled in six weeks, barring any delays in the approval of this transfer request. I am able to stay on-site the next three weeks to ensure continuity of my duties upon my separation from the Patrol Bureau. My experiences at the CPD have been rewarding and provided me an opportunity to hone my craft. Your consideration in this matter is greatly appreciated.”

For all intents and purposes her resignation letter was signed “Nicole Haught”, only she hadn’t signed it. She hadn’t even written it. But there was her signature in wet ink, the uneven pressure between the hook of the ‘g’ and the tip of the ‘h’ was indisputably her handwriting.

Three days ago, the mysterious Juan Carlo had left her alone at a tombstone with an umbrella and the envelope which contained the forged resignation letter. It felt like an eternity. After scouring the grounds for a man who disappeared into thin air, wishing she had her hands on a 9mil Glock instead of an umbrella, she ran to her red Subaru Outback and sped to the safety of her apartment. Nicole checked her mirrors every few moments, expecting to find the man following her down the side streets of downtown Chicago. But apart from a pedestrian dropping a bag of oranges in the crosswalk, the ride had been entirely uneventful.

It wasn’t until she started on her third drink of liquid courage that she dared open the envelope. As she read the letter, which now sat in the ‘to-do’ pile of Captain Morris’s desk, her stomach turned and a cold shiver ran across her skin.

Not only did this Juan Carlo character forge her signature, and know her current job and district assignment, but somehow he must have known that Purgatory tried recruiting her fresh from the Police Academy just over a year ago. He also knew how to find her many hours after a funeral she didn’t actually attend. Nicole had gone alone after the ceremony, because she was afraid she would have crumbled under the weight of the bereaved stares. The silence of the bereaved screamed that she could have done something different.

_“Sooner or later, someone or something comes along and reminds us of who we are. Where we’re meant to go. You jus’ gotta listen to what the world is telling you.”_

“So what, I just listen to a stalker freak?” Nicole growled into the air. Her anger was the only thing keeping the impending sense of panic at bay. A chirping reply came from her feet. Calamity Jane; a giant, orange, fluff-monster of a cat; rubbed against the table leg and looked up at Nicole imploringly. Nicole softened and tucked two fingers under Jane’s chin, eliciting a full-body purr from her feline companion.

Why go through all the trouble of writing her a transfer letter to a podunk, middle of nowhere town that she hadn’t given a second thought in over a year? It didn’t seem like typical stalker behavior. Yes, he knew some peculiar details about her life, but he didn’t give off the same vibe as serious stalkers. In her line of work, Nicole had met more than one stalker and had locked multiple away in Central Detention. Stalkers were intense, predatory people with eyes that bored into your insides. Those eyes screamed ‘you are the one I want’. Juan Carlo hadn’t invaded her personal space, hadn’t tried to exert any sort of control over her, and their encounter had been free of aggression. His eyes may have hid secrets, but they were not predatory.

Calamity Jane hopped into her owner’s lap and nestled into her belly. Nicole hugged her close and sipped at her beer. The cat’s deep rumbling resonated from her nose to the tip of her tail. Her whiskers twitched as fierce tears dampened the fur on her face.

Nicole fingered the corner of the envelope that night as she did now in the empty halls of CPD. She believed in being open-minded, which was distinctly different than being superstitious, and this felt like the universe was trying to tell her something. Whether it was to seize an opportunity or to watch out for a horrible trap she couldn’t tell. But for better or for worse, Nicole Haught was going to Purgatory.

.o0o. CHAPTER 1 END .o0o.


	2. I Can Handle This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without any further ado, here is your chapter two.  
> -tDoE

There was nothing going on Friday morning in Purgatory. Super quiet. Super cold. The squad car’s heater was defunct so Officer Haught and her new Boss, Sherriff Randy Nedley, hunkered down into a local diner clutching at steaming cups of strong coffee. The sweet, roasted aroma helped counteract the dismal, drab grey sky. Nicole peered out the window and saw no break in the clouds.

“At least there’s no wind.” Grinned Nicole. Chicago could be just as bitterly cold, but the wind chill made things twice as miserable. Purgatory was colder but more than bearable.

“Not in the mornings. But wait until afternoon out in the open fields, and the wind will rip you a new one faster than you can blink.” Nedley chuckled. Things were looking up. After one week on the job, his new officer had already memorized all the patrol routes, closed out two vehicular accident reports, and brought order and discipline to his messy filing cabinets. Things had been tough at the Sherriff’s department of late, and Officer Haught had managed to boost his morale ten-fold. Counting himself, there were only four officers on the force. Three if you discounted Officer Lonnie. Lonnie wasn’t incapable, per say, but his work left much to be desired. Ever since he had been left for dead on the side of the road at the hands of a serial killer who called himself the “Jack of Knives”, he had gotten a bit addled and his trigger finger a little too jumpy.

Nicole fidgeted with her coffee cup restlessly. “Sir, when do things heat up around here?”

“Not for another four months at least, it’s only November!”

“No,” she laughed, “I mean the work. I’ve seen you handling a few interesting files. I know I’m new here in Purgatory, but I worked some really high-profile cases in Chicago. I can handle the breaking and entering, and that homicide.…”

“Homicide?” Nedley snorted. “Look, Nicole, we have a lot of coyotes around here. Some folks fancy themselves outdoorsmen, get themselves drunk in the woods, and accidents happen. While sometimes terrible things do pop up, keeping the drunks off the roads is our first priority.” Nicole met Nedley’s eyes, searching for any hint of deception. She found nothing. While sorting through the initial mess of paperwork in the Sherriff’s office, she remembered several distinctly questionable files. The apparent homicide by beheading (the “coyote attack”), the mass town poisoning (a “jealous lover”, who was still on the loose by the way), and two missing persons reports had disappeared from the files she meticulously sorted through. Nedley gave no indication he knew what she was talking about.

Nedley leaned over his coffee with a gruff sort of smile. “I know the job isn’t as fast paced or as high-profile as being a cop in Chicago, but there will always be plenty of work for you here. Give it time, this place grows on you.” He reached down and pulled out his phone, frowning slightly. “There’s a call coming in from Mr. Hutchinson. Looks like his engine broke down 30 miles outside town.”

“Why is he calling you and not a tow-truck?”

“He drives the tow-truck.” Nedley shoved the phone back into his trouser pocket. “I’ll head to the fire station and see if they’re able to lend a hand with one of their rigs. If you don’t mind, drop me off there. I’ll drive out with them and see Mr. Hutchinson home so you take the car back to the office. There’s a matter that’s, er, time sensitive I’ll need you to work for me.” Nedley said awkwardly. The two stood up from the booth and donned their signature Stetsons as they pushed out the door. Nicole waited for the details, itching to dive into whatever the Sherriff had planned. “I assume you saw the papers on the petty theft?” He asked.

Nicole hopped into the driver’s seat and plugged the keys into the ignition, shivering as the cold leather ate through her khakis. “Yeah, a whole bunch of antiques went missing from a local store and it all turned up in a resident’s barn. The theft charges haven’t been officially pressed yet.”

“And I need you to keep it that way.” He said with a no-nonsense attitude. Nicole’s eyes opened wide and she nearly spit out her coffee. She turned to look at him slowly, thinking she must have misunderstood him. The silence hung in the car for a solid ten seconds, uncomfortable and tense. He breathed out heavily, knowing she’d need an explanation and not just an order.

“Look here, the shop owner claims it was Waverly Earp who stole her antiques. As officers of the law we are obligated to conduct an investigation and do our due diligence. Per protocol, we hold interviews, take statements, and look at the evidence, then determine if that points towards a legitimate crime. But around here, the Earp legacy is a contentious one. Folks even call the Earp name a curse on this town. It’s more than possible that the owner was prejudiced and placed blame on the last person in the shop before her antiques were stolen.”

“So… you want me to spin her story so it sounds like she didn’t do it?” Nicole was dumbfounded. “Sir, with all due respect, if the evidence points towards her doing it then we need to file the charges accordingly.” His words offended both her integrity and the oath she took as an officer of the peace. Nedley may have his reasons, but like hell she would be an accomplice in the obstruction of justice.

“Waverly Earp… is the nicest person in Purgatory. There was a vote. She got a sash!” Nedley slapped his knee with conviction. “I scheduled the interview for later this morning. While I’m handling the situation with Mr. Hutchinson, I need you to meet with her and work her case. I wouldn’t put this in your hands if I didn’t think you could handle it.” Nicole started to inch the car forwards. The wheels crunched over the dry snow on the roads.

Her face steeled over. The Sherriff was convinced this Waverly Earp girl was innocent. Officer Haught was convinced she belonged behind bars.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

Purgatory’s chill winds followed Nicole into the police station, rattling the door on its hinges as she shut out the cold. The winds were picking up. The clock showed 11 o’clock in the morning, but ominous storm heads boiled over the horizon. They hinted at early and imminent darkness.

Nicole set aside her Stetson and jacket. She walked to her desk and yanked out the center drawer. A silver tape recorder rattled against the wood. Nicole slammed it down on the edge of the desk directly across from the guest chair. At the CPD, officers used official-use-only iPads for all administrative work and official recordings. The difference in budget size between Purgatory and the CPD was stark. Personal electronics were frowned upon unless no other option was available. The sensitive nature of the information did not lend itself to storage on personal electronics. Not legally anyhow. This tape recorder from the early 2000’s would have to do.

She steamed.

A door slammed down the hall, and a woman sporting a leather jacket and an air of irreverence tramped up to the front counter. Nicole had seen her several times at the station before. The brunette had been in and out of the unmarked office around the corner that was always locked. She’d asked her fellow officers which division worked there, but they always changed the subject. Their efforts to avoid the subject did nothing to curb her interest.

“Where’s Nedley at?” The woman asked as she reached down the counter to grab a large handful of complimentary mints. Nicole’s eyes narrowed.

“Ms. Earp, I presume?”

“That’s me! You’re obviously new here.” She nodded knowingly and popped a mint into her mouth. She pushed past the small, wooden half-door and plopped down on the counter. She sucked loudly on the mint while kicking her feet back and forth. “Officer, what was it, Huff?”

“It’s Haught. Officer Haught.” Nicole huffed. “Ms. Earp, do I have your permission to record this interview?” She pressed record and didn’t wait for the response. The woman raised an eyebrow and began to chew the mint loudly.

“Uh, no. You don’t have permission. I know I’m famous and all, but I don’t do interviews for free. Or autographs. So where’s Nedley gone off to? I know he wanted to meet with Waves right about now and I figured I would sit in on the fun.”

“Waves?”

“Yeah, my sister Waverly.” So there was more than one Earp. “She didn’t say anything about it yesterday, but Nedley mentioned it to me last night as I was heading out.”

“Well, Sherriff Nedley is out at the moment. I’m handling this for him.” Nicole stated curtly. Glancing out the window, she watched a dark red Camaro come to a screeching halt in the parking lot. A man with a broad brimmed hat and a woman in a leopard-spotted coat walked into the station. “I’m sorry, your name was…?”

“The name’s Wynonna, Officer Haughtstuff. You obviously know the Earp part.” Never heard that one before. Nope, not once. Completely original.

“I’m going to need you to leave, Wynonna. My interview with your sister needs to be confidential.”

Two sets of eyes narrowed, and they stared at each other. Several long moments passed, and neither woman budged an inch as they each waited for the other to break. Then Wynonna cracked a smirk that didn’t quite hide her astonishment. “Wait, you’re serious.” Wynonna was genuinely surprised this newbie didn’t back down. She had spine, unlike the other officers that worked in Nedley’s shop.

The man from the parking lot came into the front office and placed a hand on Wynonna’s shoulder. “Meet me round back, we have some particulars that bear discussing.” He glanced towards Nicole and lightly tipped his hat. “I do not believe we have yet made acquaintance. The name is Henry, but folks round these parts call me Doc.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Officer Haught.” Her response to him was warmer than her short talk with Wynonna. She may be attractive, but at least he appeared to have some manners. “I assume you came here with Ms. Waverly Earp?”

“You assumed rightly.” He replied, hooking a thumb into his belt. “She’ll be here in a moment, she was right behind me.” He nodded knowingly to Wynonna and the two turned the corner towards the mystery office.

“Don’t think I won’t hear all the sordid details afterwards.” Quipped Wynonna as she swung round the door-jamb.

Nicole rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She took several deep breaths and pretended she was in her Saturday morning yoga class. Which only reminded her that this small town did not have a yoga studio and that she was on her own for the foreseeable forever. She clenched a hand into a fist. She hadn’t always been so easily frustrated.

Nicole was normally good-tempered and even-keeled. But ever since the incident she got angry. A lot. On the one hand, anger was better than the alternative. She could use her anger to fuel action. If her anger ran out? No, she didn’t want to go down that path again. Nicole pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. She needed to muster up some semblance of composure, but the knock at the door tossed all thoughts of composure out the window.

Nicole felt her face flush, and parts of her brain seemed to melt as the subject of her interrogation entered the office. The leopard coat that looked somewhat tacky in the parking lot was suddenly provocative as she swung it nonchalantly over her shoulder. This Earp was definitely different from her sister.

Waverly slipped into the interview chair and smiled. Nicole could sense herself returning the expression. Whether she wanted to smile or not was completely out of her control. “And why haven’t we met?” Waverly purred, leaning a cheek on her hand and tilting her head.

Waverly stared at her like she was the only person in the room. Aside from the fact that Nicole really was the only person in the room, the attention felt overwhelming. The theft investigation seemed unimportant. Not the interview, the statements, or the evidence. Nothing mattered except mustering up something intelligible to say to this woman.

Several minutes of conversation passed in a blur, and suddenly she found herself escorting Waverly Earp back to the front door. A small voice of reason protested in the back of her mind. “‘What’s wrong with you?” it yelled. “Someone’s store got robbed and you’re letting them walk away. She’s a crime suspect and you’re a cop on the job! Come on, Haught. Get it together! The Sherriff trusted you.” With tongue in cheek, another voice remembered Nedley didn’t seem to want her charged. Maybe he had a point…

Waverly turned around and thanked her pleasantly for her understanding. Nicole nodded bashfully with that stupid grin still plastered on her face. If Waverly hadn’t slipped something weighty into her front pocket, Nicole would have let Waverly walk right out of the station. But Nicole did notice.

“Hey, what was that?” she gestured to the coat.

“You know. Just my phone.” Waverly turned and brushed the comment off casually.

“No stop, hold on.” Nicole shook her head, and the tiny voice of reason rejoiced as the clouds in her mind started to lift. “That’s a lie, you’re holding your phone. It’s right there…”

“…in your hand.” Is how the sentence would have ended. But without warning, Waverly slammed a tightly coiled fist into Nicole’s stomach. She staggered back with the wind knocked out of her. Before she could reorient and react, the smaller woman lifted Nicole clean off the ground by her shirt collar and tossed her down the hall like a ragdoll. The tiny voice groaned as the back of Nicole’s skull struck the floorboards hard. That would hurt in the morning.

Waverly crouched down beside Nicole, an opaque blackness creeping over her eyes. “Oh, you mean this old thing?” She mocked with a raspy voice and dangled the tape recorder over Nicole’s face. “Didn’t seem like you were using it. But don’t you worry, I’ve got plans.” A different blackness was crowding the edges of Nicole’s vision, and she could do nothing to stop Waverly from plucking the handcuffs off her belt. She giggled manically and swung them from her index finger. Nicole was quickly losing consciousness, but remembered an arrogant pout, a sudden and ravenous mouth against hers, and then darkness.

Her last thought was about those black eyes, and how they looked like the eyes of that man.

.o0o. CHAPTER 2 END .o0o.


	3. I Know You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is chapter three, enjoy!  
> -tDoE

A strong waft of ammonia brought Nicole gasping into consciousness. The owner of a bristling mustache knelt over her with a small vile of smelling salts in one hand. His other hand kept her propped firmly against the wall. His companion stood several feet back with a smaller man wearing a white labcoat. She peered down at Nicole with a barely concealed anger.

“If needles had a smell, that’s what they’d smell like.” Nicole retched. Her head pounded fiercely, and the lights in the hall were brighter than she remembered.

“Now tell me, Officer Haught. Was it Waverly that did this?” Doc’s fingers fiddled hurriedly with the screw-cap to his smelling salts and stowed them inside his jacket.

“Yes, but her eyes.” She blanched, remembering the jet-black film that blocked out everything human. “Her eyes were black. And she was so strong. She threw me over fifteen feet with one hand!”

“Wynonna, I told you something was wrong with Waverly. My keys disappeared too. She must have taken them and left, seeing as neither she nor my vehicle appear to be anyplace nearby.”

“How did we let this happen?” Wynonna ran her hands through her hair and pulled at the roots in frustration. “We have to go after her. Now, Doc!”

“And how exactly do you propose we do that? We run after her? Not in this weather. We don’t even know where she’s gone!”

“You said her eyes were black?” The man in the white coat asked inquisitively. “Did they look like they were oozing? And did she sound like a demonic force of evil on steroids?” Nicole nodded dumbly, wincing as stars exploded along the sides of her vision. He cringed. “Oh man, it’s the same demon that got Lucado. It’s called Mictian, a demonic parasite. Extremely malevolent and very contagious.”

“You mean the same demon that made her literally explode?” Wynonna herself nearly exploded.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “When Lucado tried to capture that revenant Bobo at the border, that guy you totally killed, she said she found a big puddle of demon-goo at the kill site. She thought it was an artifact from his getting sent to Hell and all. She brought back a sample for me to analyze and I’ve been working with it for weeks. It had all the markers of an infectious contagion, so I’ve been working on reverse-engineering a neutralizing agent. Then she came up to me sounding completely nuts. Out of her mind! Before I knew it she had her fingers full of the stuff. My neutralizer wasn’t ready and it all happened so fast. Then… boom!” He waved his arms about, mimicking something exceptionally messy.

“You know what Jeremy, I didn’t hear a lot of what you said, but I’m sure I heard something about an antidote. Do you have something? Anything?” Pleaded Wynonna.

“I have a rough ratio of ingredients, but I haven’t tested for crucial variables like ambient temperature, dissolution rate, or…” Doc whipped out a flask from his waistcoat and downed it in moments. He licked his lips and shoved the flask into Jeremy’s hands.

“Just pour everything in here, Jeremy, and we’ll try it. If it is truly the demon that killed Lucado, then we do not have the luxury of time.” Jeremy nodded, fumbling the flask as he ran off.

Nicole staggered to her feet, tightly gripping Doc’s arm at the elbow. “Since you all seem to know an awful lot about this… whatever this is, would someone please explain what is going on?”

“It’s too complex for local flatfoots.” Wynonna said dismissively. Her mind was elsewhere and far more preoccupied with saving her sister than explaining the situation to a new person. Wynonna was a woman of action, not words. She chased Jeremy down the hall in a blur of angry leather.

“Ma’am, you’ll have to forgive her. Today has been extremely…trying. I know this is all rather unconventional, but we could really use your help. We don’t know what Waverly…”

“I know where she’s going.” Nicole interrupted, shakily dusting herself off. “There’s an address listed for a barn in the case I was trying to interview her for.” Doc looked confused.

“A barn? There’s one back at the homestead, but why would she go where we could find her? It seems awfully predictable.”

“She’s stealing things, and I’ll bet everything she’s taking her latest item back to her collection. Although I can’t imagine her motives or what she could want with my tape recorder, handcuffs, and a bunch of antiques.” A haughtness burned in her hands, and Nicole kicked into high gear. She pushed by Doc back into her office, pulled on her heavy coat, and tugged out the keys to the police cruiser.

“We’ve got it!” Wynonna stormed in, holding the flask above her head victoriously. Jeremy followed close in tow, voicing his concerns about the mixture’s instability and pleading Wynonna to handle it gently. “Look, I think I know where Waverly’s gone…”

Nicole began walking out ahead of the group. “Yeah, your barn, Earp. Now you can either come with me, or you can walk. Your choice.”

“Carpooling! Very environmentally friendly.” Jeremy piped in. Wynonna gave him a withering glance but quickly returned to the matter at hand.

Nicole swung the front door open and paused. She tipped the brim of her Stetson and met Wynonna’s gaze for the second time that day. “Let’s roll. Us flatfoots know how to gun an accelerator.”

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

“What’s with the renaissance fair?” The Earp heir wondered as she stuffed fresh bullets into Peacemaker. A group of a dozen red-robed men with black plague masks stood chanting in unison outside the homestead’s barn. “Aw shit, it’s those fire-brigade knuckleheads.” The team watched them wave burning torches in a frenzy from the relative safety of the police cruiser. Nicole dimmed the headlights as they pulled up, but the cult was so caught up in their vigor that they wouldn’t notice if she put the sirens on full blast.

“I know not. But if our Waverly is inside, possessed or not, she won’t stand a chance unless we do something and fast.” Doc’s mustache twitched anxiously. His knuckles gripped his guns with a white fury. “They have not yet noticed us. Wynonna, you take the six to the right and I’ll handle…”

Nicole shook her head. “Do something rash like that and the barn goes up in flames. I’ve had to work riot control. With that much fire? They mean business.”

“Doc, do you remember that plate we found? It had the fire department’s crest on it. Maybe we could negotiate a trade for time to fix this.” Jeremy suggested. After a short debate, they agreed it was the only real chance they had.

A loud crackle of lightning split the sky as Wynonna and company burst out of the cruiser. On cue, the brigade turned in unison towards the newcomers in open hostility. Axes and guns were poised at the ready, itching to be used. Several long and agonizing minutes crawled by as Wynonna and the brigade’s leader had it out like cats in an alley. Finally, when she offered the mysterious plate in exchange for entrance, he relented and allowed Nicole and Wynonna to enter the barn for ten minutes. If they did not return in ten minutes then his men would set the barn alight. Doc kept them in the sights of his guns. In the event the brigade moved to torch anything, he would ensure they bled out before they saw their actions through.

The two women walked cautiously towards the front door. Neither was sure what they would find in the barn. Wynonna’s breath hung shakily in the icy air, “Hang in there, baby girl. We’re coming.” They kicked down the door.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

Every hair on Gooverly’s stolen skin prickled in the electrically charged atmosphere. With fingers that flexed in all the wrong ways, the parasite gripped the towering metal structure. It added a finishing touch by securing its hand to the structure using the handcuffs it stole from that ginger, butch cop at the station. A mirthless cackle escaped from the depths of its depravity. The ceaseless efforts to override the body’s host were finally paying off. Even if the Waverly girl managed to batter Mictian back one last time, the cuffs would thwart her attempt to escape. Mictian knew it was only a matter of minutes until a storm cloud unleashed the finishing act, so not even the bang at the barn door could spoil its high.

“Oh, you two again.” Mictian giggled and swung round the metal tower, flaunting her presupposed victory. “Come to see the show?”

Wynonna growled and yelled out fiercely. “Waverly, I know you’re in there. You have to fight it!”

No hint of Waverly’s hazel eyes lived in the two inky pools of darkness. “She can’t, she’s tired and doesn’t know who she is or what she’s fighting anymore.” It giggled, posturing suggestively against its metal creation. “You know, I didn’t think she’d take so long to cave. But once she did, I found her dark edges to be absolutely... delicious!” The demon said with relish, licking its lips.

“We have something to get it out of you… help us help you.”

“Her potential is wasted on your cursed crusade.” Mictian spat, shivering as it heard a thunderclap. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Waves, I know it hurts but you have to fight just a little more.” Wynonna cautiously stepped forward. Her voice was hoarse. “I can’t lose you too.”

“You stupid Earp. You’ve already lost her! This storm harkens the beginning of my new era, and this will be the face that leads my legions.”

Wynonna’s face paled white with dread. “Oh god… Haught the lightning. It’s going to use the storm to Frankenstein-fuse with her body, and she’s locked to that tower of terror.” Nicole dug deep into the pockets of her utility belt. “Please tell me you have the keys.” She gasped when Nicole produced a small set of keys. They stood a chance. With a small nod of understanding, Wynonna and Nicole leapt into action.

The angry women tackled Mictian to the ground. Limbs thrashed as the dynamic duo sought to hold the demon down, but they had underestimated its strength. Mictian unleashed a shriek befitting any self-respecting hell-spawn and sent Wynonna flying across the room. The heir landed headfirst against the edge of a wheelbarrow and slumped to the ground in a heap. Nicole relinquished her grip on the demon’s legs and hopped back, just out of reach of a vicious kick aimed at her nose. Eyes narrowed with intense focus, Nicole crouched and tried to circle around the possessed Earp sister. She needed to get at those handcuffs. A shudder ran down her spine as the demonic blackness bored into her.

“Waverly Earp, are you in there? Look what you’ve done to the sister you love.”

“I know you.” Hissed Mictian, keeping its borrowed legs between her and Nicole and ready to lash out in an instant. “We met in Chicago, didn’t we? You had me all tied up, tried to lock me away in your stupid prison.” It jeered, hoping to buy time for that next strike of perfect lightning. Nicole’s blood froze in her veins. “You weren’t fast enough then and you’re not fast enough now.”

“Stop it.” Nicole barked. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. She clenched her fists. The demon leered at her, tilting her head at an angle that wasn’t quite human. Mictian knew just how to press this human’s buttons.

“I know what you did. She trusted you. All that blood and you just stood there.” Flashbacks of screams and terror flooded Nicole’s eyes with tears. “Did you even love her?”

“That’s enough!” Nicole cried and lunged forward. As she grabbed handfuls of the Gooverly’s shirt lapels the darkness suddenly receded. Nicole found herself staring at a girl taxed far beyond her limits.

“I’m so sorry!” Waverly sobbed. Her body was tense but immobile as she fought against the demon within. “I know what it did.” She gasped. “To you, to others… and I know what it’s going to do. It won’t end with me. Stop this monster, or it’ll hurt everyone. I don’t care what you have to do, but please…” she begged. “Make it stop.” Waverly’s plea ground Nicole’s broken heart into dust.

The sound of Waverly’s voice brought Wynonna staggering to her feet. She snatched up the bottle of emollient from the ground and jumped in front of Nicole onto Waverly’s chest. “Hold her down, Haught!” Wynonna yelled as she clamped a hand over Waverly’s nose. “Remember when I forced you to drink grape soda? Open up!” After several oxygen-deprived moments, Waverly managed to ingest the mixture and keep it down. Nicole and Wynonna clambered off her as they felt her stomach spasm in violent reaction to the concoction.

They watched in revulsion as an exorcist-level purge of black sewage erupted from Waverly’s mouth. Nicole drew her weapon in horror as a leech-like creature the size of her thigh screeched angrily and writhed along the barn floor. She fired off 3 rounds which sank harmlessly into the nightmare slug’s body. Wynonna drew a handgun with a ridiculously long barrel that burned with a fiery glow. Nicole watched in stunned silence as Wynonna sighted the parasite, pulled the trigger, and somehow burned the sucker into ashes.

Suddenly the barn was silent. Wynonna dropped her pistol and fell to her knees, scooping her sister into her arms. Nicole fumbled with the handcuff keys. Her fingers were numb. They shook as she clumsily released Waverly Earp from the metal contraption. She stepped back, not wanting to intrude. Nicole reached up to her face and felt the tears spilling out. Her mind was processing everything and nothing at the same time. She knew as things made more sense they only would get more painful.

The door burst open behind her, and Doc and Jeremy ran full speed towards the Earp siblings. Sunlight came chasing in at their heels. The clouds dissipated as mysteriously as they had arrived. Nicole watched them reunite as an outsider. She wasn’t part of their world, but she had questions. A lot of questions. She hoped they would let her in on the answers.

.o0o. CHAPTER 3 END .o0o.


	4. Demons are Definitely a Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of now, I've written 6 chapters. Sooo I'm going to drop them all now, and stop obsessing over them. Then I'll get myself focused and rearing to go on chapter 7!  
> -tDoE

Doc’s car suffered a flat tire and broken fender after being driven by the possessed Earp sister. Turns out powerful tentacle demons do not have the best hand-eye coordination. As if that wasn’t bad enough, in the aftermath of the exorcism, Waverly had succumbed to a serious case of dehydration. Officer Haught agreed to drive them to the hospital using the squad car instead of waiting for an ambulance. They rolled up to Purgatory Medical Hospital, Purgatory’s premier medical center. The town had a reputation for naming things literally. Last week, Nicole drove by a lake called “Big Deep Lake”. She concluded that Purgatory’s namesake must be equally fitting.

However, much to her surprise, the hospital orderlies in-processed Waverly both quickly and efficiently. No amount of reassurance from the doctors convinced Wynonna to leave her sister’s side. The staff would have had better luck convincing a vegetarian to wolf down a steak. Since Waverly wasn’t in critical condition, they could do nothing to prevent the stubborn Earp sister from staying. The others, however, were not immediate family and were forced to sit in the waiting room.

Nicole sat by herself on a well-worn couch and watched Jeremy and Doc from across the room. She could have sworn Jeremy was showing Doc how to use the vending machine, but that was ridiculous. Who couldn’t use a vending machine? Although he seemed genuinely surprised when a Three Musketeers bar came tumbling down. Several dollar bills later, Jeremy marched over to Nicole and offered her one of the silver wrapped treats.

“Get it? Three Musketeers? And there’s three of us out here?” He said with a shamelessly goofy grin. Nicole winced, but accepted his gift. “I like food puns.” He admitted with a shrug and sat down. “Actually I like all puns, and comedy in general. You should hear me at open mike night. I’m like the king of puns. They say my acts are absolutely ‘pun-derful’.”

“Do they though?” Nicole raised an eyebrow, which made him laugh. He admitted that was probably a slight exaggeration, but that she’d have to come to a performance to decide for herself. He peeled open the candy and took a satisfied bite.

“You didn’t have to come with us, or drive us all here.” Jeremy sputtered through a mouthful of chocolate. “Especially after all the weirdness you’ve seen in the past few hours that probably makes no sense. On behalf of everyone, especially Wynonna because she has no tact, I want to say thanks. You’re good people in my book.”

“Serve and protect is kind of my thing.” Nicole smiled, unwrapping his offering in her lap. “You sound like you know a lot about this ‘weirdness’ going on, and to some extent everyone else does too.” She paused. A thousand questions were on the tip of her tongue but she unsure where to start. “Look, something happened to me in Chicago. There’s no doubt in my mind now that… that thing was the same thing that found me there. I don’t know if it followed me or if it’s coincidence. But it’s definitely real. And somehow your friend Wynonna managed to kill it with that gun of hers.” Her mouth felt dry and awful. “Mind getting me up to speed?”

Jeremy needed no further prompting. He was a sucker for an audience. Starting at the beginning, the overeager lab analyst launched into gory details. The Earp curse, a crazy underground organization gone missing, the Mictian demon, a man named Dolls who might be a monster hiding out in the woods. This guy was like Wikipedia on steroids. Then when it came to Doc, and how he was actually _the_ Doc Holliday, Nicole caught the surprisingly youthful 166 year old glance over at them awkwardly every time he heard his name. When Nicole caught him looking, he would suddenly take great interest in the health of his cuticles.

She gently refocused the conversation to a subject she never would have dreamed of a year ago: demons. After what she’d seen today, the uncanny happenings she had experienced didn’t have any other satisfactory explanations. “I can’t say for certain,” Jeremy sputtered through a mouthful of chocolate, “but I have a feeling we’ve seen the last of Mictian. And my intuition’s pretty top notch.” Nicole sighed heavily. It was a lot to take in. Was it really dead?

The lobby doors swung open. Purgatory certainly did not lack in the no-nonsense brunettes department, and this woman was on a mission. Her hair was pulled back severely and complemented by massive hoop earrings. Doc seemed to know her, and the two convened in lowered tones by the reception desk.

“Who’s that?” Nicole couldn’t stop herself from rubbernecking.

“That’s Rosita. She works for Doc at Shorty’s and is a brilliant chemist. He owns it, you know? She’s been working on a fix for our friend Dolls.” Jeremy shook his head. “Gosh, I can’t believe no one thought to tell her about Waverly earlier. She must have been worried sick! They’re kind of a thing.”

“Oh. Like a… thing?” She watched as Doc and Rosita spoke in hushed tones. Not that she cared.

“It’s not toats offish, but I can tell something’s going on between them.” Jeremy stuffed the candy bar wrapper into his pocket. “Here’s the backstory. See, Waverly’s other sister Willa was totally evil. She unleashed some pretty bad mojo into the Ghost River Triangle. She’s the reason Black Badge moved into Purga-territory. Dolls and I go way back. That guy has seen some serious combat and knows how to treat all sorts of injuries. When Willa threatened to steal Peacemaker, Waverly stood up to Willa and she shot her in cold blood! Dolls was at the station that night and saved her life. But he had to disappear and go into hiding right afterwards because my old boss had a vendetta against him for something that was totally not his fault.”

“Ever since then he’s been cut off from his meds. His condition has been getting bad and fast. Rosita is an old friend of Doc’s. Since she has an advanced degree in biochemistry he asked for her help. He introduced her to Waverly to try and collect samples of Doll’s DNA from her belongings that night. They really hit it off, and Rosita started visiting her a whole lot to keep her company. It’s been way too frequent to be casual, there’s definitely something going on there. But man, who knows how long she been possessed! I mean it was definitely sometime after I started working with the sample in the lab. But whoof, somebody should tell Rosita and I don’t want it to be me.”

“Wow, okay. Uh, that’s a lot.” Nicole closed her eyes and sunk into the couch backing. Was it just her, or was it suffocatingly warm? “I need to step out for some air. I should call Nedley, tell him I’ll be late getting back to the office.” Jeremy said something, but Nicole was already halfway out the double doors. They clicked shut behind her and she welcomed the silence. The air outside was refreshingly cold. She gulped it down, hoping it would quell the tightness coiled in the pit of her stomach.

Demons. It made sense. After battling inner demons, why not fight real ones? At least if hellspawn and minions of darkness weren’t figments of her imagination, then she wasn’t crazy. In dreams, ghoulish eyes haunted her, cackling gleefully as she was strangled by eager fingers. The memories of that night flooded back in chilling detail. The screams. The blood. The weight of the axe in her hand as she seized the impossible opportunity to kill the man (demon), chopping his (its) body again and again with brutal imprecision. Jeremy had called it a Mictian. Whatever it was, that thing was supposed to be dead. She killed it. But here it looked like someone else. Had if followed her here? Or stranger yet, had she followed it?

“Got a light?” Growled a tough sitting slouched on a nearby bench. An unlit cigarette hung loosely from his lips. He turned to her with an unnerving intensity. Nicole watched warily as he lurched to his feet. He pulled at his unkempt facial hair, leering at her distastefully. “Cuz you seem like the kinda girl who likes getting lit.”

“I recognize you, Daniel Barcus.” She spoke evenly, squaring her shoulders. Barcus was short and she towered over him.

“It appears my reputation proceeds me.” He said mockingly, dipping into a bow.

“I’m Officer Haught with the Sherriff’s department, and you’re wanted for questioning in a homicide. A girl was murdered not more than 50 feet from your gas station. You’ve been laying low ever since.”

“But here I am.” He sneered. “I’d love to say it was my doing, but someone worse than the likes of me got to her first. A damn shame that wolf bastard got to her first...” He licked his lips.

Barcus’s file hadn’t painted him as an upstanding citizen, but his demeanor chilled her to the bone. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck, and she became intensely aware of her firearm’s weight on her hip. She shifted her weight to her back foot as he stepped forward.

“Stop right there.” Nicole said authoritatively, posturing herself for action. He paused as if he were considering it, but he grinned and continued walking. “I said stop.” She said sternly. Her eyes flickered from left to right, scanning the scene. They were alone, and the security camera perched high on the lamppost was their only witness. Of course, no guards would be watching the feeds when something was actually about to happen. That would be too convenient.

“No, I don’t think so.” He laughed and his eyes sunk deep into his skull, their centers burning deeply like embers. Her training instincts took over. Before she could blink she held the Glock in her hands and loosed three rounds square into his face. Her brain caught up with what she had done when he hit the ground. Her heart pounded in her chest. Those were definitely not human eyes, she reassured herself, edging closer to the body with her weapon braced tightly against her chest.

He sat up in a spray of blood with his tongue lolling out the bottom of his shattered jaw. His face was caved in, but the embers in his sockets burned brighter and angrier than before. Not a good sign. She loosed the rest of her magazine into his chest and legs but he wouldn’t stay down. It seemed she needed to take an introductory course on demon killing, because her current tactics sucked balls.

She released the empty magazine and it clattered onto the concrete. She ripped out a second magazine and smacked it into place. Her eyes locked on the horror show that staggered and screeched unintelligible words from the mush that used to be a mouth. Gunshots rang in her ears, but that time she hadn’t pulled the trigger.

Golden shafts erupted from the demon’s body and he collapsed. Wynonna Earp strode out confidently holding a revolver with a barrel longer than her forearm. She pressed the nozzle in-between the demon’s eyes and loosed a final bullet. The pavement split open into a fiery chasm that roared and sputtered. Daniel Barcus, or what was left of him, was swallowed up by the raging inferno in moments. Then there was nothing but the cool, dry blackness of the asphalt. Nicole blinked and saw the imprints left by the fire against the blacks of her eyelids. She definitely didn’t imagine that.

“So that’s a thing.” Nicole’s nearly shouted, barely able to hear herself over the drumming of her heart. “I mean Jeremy said you killed demons, but wow. With the magic gun? And random lava pit? That’s some crazy stuff.”

“Yeah, Revenants. I send them to Hell. It’s kinda my thing.” Wynonna said nonchalantly as she shoved the revolver down the side of her boot. “The security guys went on break and left donuts. Naturally I went to take a few off their hands, aaand it’s a good thing I did.” She said, waving to the security camera. “Saw you on one of the feeds. You slowed him down well enough, but I’m the only one who can send them packing. Nice aim though. You’re a good shot.”

“Thanks, top of my class.” Nicole flicked on the safety and returned the handgun to its holster. Wynonna shoved her hands in the pockets of her over-fringed leather jacket over and meandered to her side.

“I should thank you. You helped me get my baby sister back today. You’re alright, Haught.” They looked at each other with a newfound respect. “But pro-tip, don’t write this up. The people in this town don’t do supernatural, and Nedley wants to keep it that way even if it kills him.” The two women conversed in low, easy tones as they walked back to the hospital lobby. There was even talk of pancakes in the near future.

All was quiet save the rumbling of trucks in the distance. Two, curious men exited from a car at the very edge of the parking lot and casually approached the scene where the heir had sent Daniel Barcus to roast for eternity. The shorter, thicker man hid behind heavy sunglasses wore a thick, jacket with the hood pulled tightly over his head. His bottom lip was filled with dip, and his mouth was frozen in a perpetual grin. The other man was tall and wiry, with dark, stringy hair that framed thin and sallow cheekbones. The tall man’s hands were shoved deep inside his greasy coat pockets and fiddled ceaselessly with whatever trinkets he had inside. They stopped only a few feet away from where the Revenant met his untimely end.

“Smell that, Luke?” Rasped the thin man. His voice grated like chalk on a chalkboard. “Smells like home.”

.o0o. CHAPTER 4 END .o0o.


	5. A Grand Re-Opening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!  
> -tDoE

“You need to redo this report.” Nedley huffed from behind his mustache. “I’ll entertain office high-jinks every now and then, for morale and all, but this is ridiculous. Demons? Geez Haught, did you get into the confiscated property room? Don’t make me pull the ‘random’ drug test card today.” He threatened, wagging his finger in admonishment.

“Nedley, I couldn’t make this up if I tried!” Nicole waved her hands in disbelief. “There is some crazy stuff going on here in Purgatory.”

“Enough is enough. I don’t believe a word.” He chucked the file into the trash without a second glance. “Give me the real story, not this fairytale nonsense. I’m old, not senile. I know when someone’s pulling my leg.”

What else could she do but be a good sport and give the boss-man what he wanted? Wynonna warned her Nedley would be stubborn about the supernatural stuff. But to pretend it wasn’t there? Wouldn’t it be better if people knew about the dangers so they could be prepared?

“Fine. Yes… yes, I’ll rework it. And take out the jokes.”

“Eight o’clock, Friday. My desk.” He took a swig of his coffee while pulling out another folder he had tucked under his arm. “By the way, I need you to take over one of Lonnie’s cases. He needs to take some, er, mental health time, so he’ll be out of the office for a couple weeks.”

Oh joy, she thought as she rolled her eyes. Officer Tweaker couldn’t handle his nerves and now everyone else would have to pick up the slack. She accepted the thick brown folder he handed her. It was probably several weeks backlog of traffic violations. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the giant red ‘confidential’ stamp. Definitely not traffic violations.

“I know you’re itching for more of a challenge. It’s not Chicago, but for Purgatory, this is as high-profile as it gets. Here’s a tip, seeing as you’re still new in town. Shorty’s bar is never short on patrons and they serve all types. A few beers and a nice whiskey does wonders. If I were working this, that’s where I’d start. See what the people on the street are saying.”

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o.

Later that evening, dressed in casual civilian attire, Nicole circled the Shorty’s parking lot for the third time without an empty parking spot in sight. The lot was full to bursting with Purgatory’s finest. And Purgatory’s mediocre. And probably some of the worst too.

Tonight was Shorty’s grand re-opening. Nedley told her that the bar had quickly passed between several owners after the actual Shorty passed last year. The previous round of bad management made a real mess of things and completely trashed the place. They even renamed the bar to Bobo’s, which was vaguely reminiscent of carnival clowns and couldn’t have been good for business. It left the regulars in a lurch until about a month ago when the bar changed hands once more. Nicole somehow wasn’t shocked to hear Mr. Holliday himself was the buyer. Her newfound acquaintances seemed to have a knack for being in the middle of everything in this town.

She found a spot at last, and wedged her car between an old rusted Ford and a Toyota Camry with uneven, hand-painted racing stripes two blocks away. Nicole couldn’t suppress a snicker as she strode towards the bar’s heavy double doors. That paint job was probably a great idea after the sixth shot. She’d made worse decisions.

Shorty’s was bursting at the seams with what appeared to be half of Purgatory’s population. There were tipsy patrons arguing about what next to play on the jukebox, young bucks guffawing loudly over the pool tables, old trucker types guzzling beer and arguing sports, and not a few ladies challenging their friends to drinking contests. Nedley was spot on. If he wasn’t here already, somebody here had to know Josh Miller.

Nicole shouldered herself through the joyous, bumbling crowd to get to the bar. She eyed the taps studiously, and was about to order what appeared to be a local brew when she found herself face to face with Rosita. Of course she would work here. Since Doc owned the place, and with her being Doc’s ‘lab assistant’ and all, why wouldn’t she work the bar as well?

“Oh hey, hon. You’re that cop from the other day, right?” She asked brusquely, whipping out several glasses and filling them to the brim.

“Yeah, that’s me!” Nicole smiled, trying not to make a big deal of it. “But I’m off duty now, so I’m plain Jane tonight.”

“Plain’s a bit of an understatement.” Rosita said offhandedly as she slid the glasses down the bar into the hands of eager customers. “What’re you having tonight, Jane?” All thoughts of fermented beverages took a backseat as Nicole recovered from the backhanded comment about her attire. This is a nice sweater! Not-flashy perhaps, and yes it’s grey, but extremely comfortable and warm. And the sleeves were tastefully rolled at the elbows. Unlike some people, she didn’t feel like wearing a crop top in winter. Rude.

“It’s Nicole, actually. And I’ll take that lager there.” She gestured. “How is your friend doing?” Rosita shrugged, her face hard and unreadable. This was a woman who kept her walls up all the time.

“Discharged yesterday, actually. Most people would be pretty shaken up about everything. But not that one. She’s a fighter.” She wiped the foam dribbling down the side of the glass and delivered Haught’s draught. “Her sister says you had a hand in getting her out of that mess.” Nicole shrugged it off, and was about to say something nonchalant in response when the words lodged in her throat.

A buzzing warmth filled her inside and out, like that mouthful of beer had single-handedly formed the world’s coziest beer jacket. Even stranger, that single sip left her mouth feeling drier than when the dentist crams cotton between your cheeks and gums. Down the staircase she came, dressed in tight, high-waisted jeans and a loose red and blue shirt with “Shorty’s” emblazoned in all capital letters. She descended slowly, clearly using the banister to support a portion of her weight. She was hurting.

Rosita turned and smiled, breaking from the tough and indifferent persona she embodied moments before. The drink orders kept her tied to the bar but she beckoned Waverly over. Much to Nicole’s delight. When Waverly stepped behind the bar, the pain she carried down the staircase melted away. She started mixing drinks with a practiced hand to help meet the overwhelming customer demands. Nicole could have watched her rim margarita glasses and shove orange slices into beers all night.

Waverly seemed to finally notice Nicole amidst the jostling crowd, because as soon as she looked her way, Waverly pulled a tap so hard that it jammed and sprayed in every direction. The seated patrons scattered with a squeal, trying to escape the delicious mist. Not deterred at the mess, Nicole reached across the bar and pulled back as hard as she could. The stubborn tap budged when Waverly threw her full weight into the effort. She shoved desperately with all her might amidst a colorful spout of curses, and finally stopped the beer sprinkler from drowning them all. They looked at each other, soaked in a Belgian white and gripping the tap in a way that let their fingers touch. They laughed.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. You’re soaked!” Waverly gasped between bellyfuls of laughter. “I don’t know what happened! These things have gotten shoddier since the last guy fouled up the place. They were finicky before, but they’re definitely worse now.”

“It’s okay,” Nicole said as she wiped her palms on the front of her jeans. “You looked like you were doing fine until you saw me, so I’ll take the hit for this one.” The two of them stood there stood there giggling and dripping beer onto the floorboards. This felt like the faux-interview back at the station, before she became momentarily evil and beat the snot out of her. But that was in the past!

“What happened?” Asked Rosita, who finally noticed the mess. Nicole stepped back and wiped her forearms off with a couple of stolen napkins. Waverly explained while Rosita began dabbing at her cheeks with a cloth. As if she couldn’t have done that herself, Nicole scowled to herself. “You’d better get changed.” Glancing over at Nicole she added, “You too. I have spare shirts upstairs.”

The crowd gave them a wide berth as they walked towards the staircase damp and smelling of hops. Nicole let Waverly lead the way, noticing again that she put a lot of weight into the railing. They reached the top of the stairs and entered a small, sparsely decorated room. Waverly bee-lined for the closet and began shuffling the hangers back and forth.

“I’m still so sorry, I can’t believe that happened. I am such a klutz! Geez, what size do you wear? You’re so much taller, I hope... Oh, wait I know there’s a sweatshirt in here that will fit you. It’s funny, I used to live up here. It feels a lot smaller now. Which is strange because Rosita doesn’t have too many things here so it should feel bigger. Isn’t that weird? It’s so weird.” Waverly’s thoughts came out in a rush as she frantically passed over dozens of clothes hangers. She clearly found breathing overrated. Waverly found what she was looking for and turned to press the bright Blue Devils hoodie into Nicole’s hands. “Here…” she said, the torrent of words dying off as she looked up at Nicole.

“It’s really alright, thank you.” Nicole smiled as she accepted the sweatshirt. “And what did you choose?” She asked, eyeing the golden tank top Waverly clutched close to her chest.

“Oh this old thing? It’s nothing. Just something I left…” she trailed off. How many other things had she left? Nicole tried to keep a neutral look on her face. She remembered Jeremy’s rambling overview of the group’s dynamics, but secretly hoped he misread some of those subtleties.

“Ah, are you and her…?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?” So it was complicated. Not that it mattered, Nicole chastised herself. She fought to suppress a grin from creeping over her face. What was wrong with her? This was absurd. She was supposed to be investigating the Miller case, but here she was talking to a girl in another girl’s apartment above a bar still dripping with booze. It felt like junior year in college all over again.

“W-would you mind…?” asked Waverly, whirling her finger around in a small circle.

“Oh, yes! Right.” Turning around, Nicole quickly slipped out of her wet sweater and slipped on the cozy hoodie. Blue Devils, huh? Wasn’t that the mascot of the local highschool?

“Ugh, shit! Um, excuse me. Nicole wasn’t it? I, uhm… I’m stuck. Help please?” Yup. Definitely a repeat of junior year. Waverly managed to catch the topmost button in her hair, her arms twisted behind her head leaving her torso completely exposed. There were movies where this kind of thing happened, and not the PG kind. With all the politeness she could muster, she helped Waverly pull off the offending shirt. As the fabric peeled away, Nicole saw two angry red scars. One gash on her ribs, shallow and long. The second, a deep puncture between her clavicle and chest. Gunshot wounds. They weren’t old.

“Oh geez…” Without thinking Nicole brushed the surrounding skin on the girl’s shoulder gently. “What happened?” Nicole bristled at the thought of Waverly at gunpoint. She recalled Jeremy's story, and how this young woman's bravery put her on the wrong end of her sister's wrath. How she nearly bled out on the floor. How the quick action of a fugitive saved her life. Nicole, lost in thought, realized how close the two of them were standing, half dressed, with her hand lightly resting on her shoulder. Nicole pulled back quickly and began to apologize.

“I’m sorry, that’s very personal and inappropriate and I didn’t mean to…”

“No, it’s fine.” Waverly hitched. Her muscles tightened but she didn’t draw back. “But I really, really don’t want to talk about that.” She threw on her new shirt and patted it down, keeping her eyes cast to the floor. “But I do want to say thank you. Really. For what you did? That thing was inside me for weeks. It was so dark, like I was locked away from the world." She wrung her hands, and Nicole was overcome with the desire to hold them. "But your face. Your face burst through the darkness so clearly, and I felt like I knew you. Then I woke up. Wynonna filled me in on the details. That was brave, I owe you one."

“Hey, that’s alright.” Nicole rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m uh… I’m glad to see you on your feet. Because last time you definitely were not.” Officer Haught, maybe. Officer Smooth? Not so much. But even as she berated herself, she witnessed a smile creep over Waverly’s face.

“We should head back down. Rosie’s probably swamped, and you have the rest of your night to enjoy!” They tramped down the stairs, Nicole trailing at her heels. The dull ache in her chest deepened when again when she saw Waverly favor the one side. She must be recovering from more than than two wounds, but how many more?

Across the room, an inconspicuous man caught Nicole's attention. The shabby trucker's jacket, the wiry hair poking from under a faded baseball cap, she would have recognized him anywhere. He was looking straight at her. She instinctively moved herself between him and Waverly, then excused herself abruptly. Her hand slipped down to the knife hooked inside the front pocket of her jeans as she approached through the jostling crowds. He subtly raised his drink with a nod of his head.

"I like the sweatshirt, Nicole. Looks real good on yeh."

"Cut the crap, Juan Carlo. If that is your real name." He chuckled and brought the lip of his glass to his mouth. "You have some explaining to do, you hear me? What are you doing here, what the hell was with the creepy envelope, are you involved with these demon freaks, and how did you find me?"

"Well I certainly encouraged you to come Purgatory, but don't flatter yourself. I also happen to live here. Fancied a drink at the best bar in town. While Shorty's was under renovations, the only alternatives were those clubs with the awful music and sugary garbage. Hardly alternatives at all, if you ask me."

"I'm serious, what do you want? Give it to me straight. No sugary garbage."

"Oh, I don't know about that." He chastened, speaking kindly. "Straight talking is outside my job description. If I did have all the answers I wouldn't be able to give them to you. But I see bits and pieces of the whole. What I can tell you is that you're finally on track. Something larger than you or me derailed you and I mean to get to the bottom of what that means. See, this Sanctuary has been waiting for you."

"Is that the beer talking? You're not making sense." She huffed.

"Sense has nothing to do with it." He interrupted himself with a belch and set his empty glass down on a nearby table. "Try to apply something like 'sense' to Purgatory, and all you'll get is gobbledegook. You know tha' young lady over there? Yes, you know the one. You kept her waiting. And now she's hurting and needs you more than ever. And there's a part of yeh that needs her too, you know it. There's a twisting in your gut that's telling you it's true and it's important. You don't like it but you felt it, jus now. I can see yer heart's written all over yer face." Nicole was taken aback. She didn't know what to say or what to feel, all she wanted was the truth. It felt so far away.

"Look here, you and I want answers. Now those're gonna take time. I know you don't trust me, and I haven't exactly earned it, but time is against us. You've seen evil now. Real evil. And it's only going to get worse. Something terrible is brewing." The mechanic's voice dropped, quavering with urgency. "I can help you with the Miller case. If you find I'm right with this matter, then I hope you'll have it in your heart to trust me in the days to come."

"I'm listening."

"Tomorrow, at dusk. Be at Purgatory Cemetery, it's on the northwest outskirts of town... He'll be there. Bring cigars and plenty of rum."

.o0o. CHAPTER 5 END .o0o. 


	6. Of Lizard Wranglers and Voodoo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! Off to start plotting chapter 7.  
> -tDoE

"Waves, do you remember where I left the Seagram's?" Wynonna called, pawing furiously through the liquor cabinet. It was five thirty in the afternoon on a Friday, and she had yet to ingest a single drop of alcohol. The situation was looking grim.

"You drank it all, remember?" Waverly yelled down from upstairs.

"No, I don't remember. Isn't that the point of drinking?" She mumbled under her breath. Her hand closed around the neck of something promising in the darkest corner of the cabinet and she cheered! But when she pulled it out, the bottle was completely empty. What a roller coaster of emotions.

"Maybe if you recycled every once in a while instead of leaving empty bottles all around..."

"That settles it, I'm going to pick up more booze. Do you want anything?" Wynonna called, already halfway out the door.

"Some vodka, ginger beer, and limes would be amazing, sis!" Wynonna pulled her full-faced helmet on and joyfully wheeled her Harley out of the barn. She cranked the ignition, shifted into higher gear, and peeled down the road towards True Brews Liquor.

Not one for shopping carts, Wynonna clutched all the precious liquor in her hands. She shoved several bottles of whiskey under her armpits, held a bottle of vodka in one hand and the all important red vines in the other, and shoved several limes into the pocket of her leather jacket. As she considered her carrying options, she spied a familiar police officer standing at the end of the aisle.

"Hey Haught, since you've got a free hand will you grab me some of this ginger beer?" Nicole eyed her skeptically.

"Ginger beer, really?"

"A happy coincidence." Wynonna shrugged. Nicole rolled her eyes and pulled the six pack off the shelf. Wynonna's eyes widened as she spied a package of cigars tucked neatly under one arm. "I didn't peg you as a cigar aficionado. What plans do you have for those bad boys?"

"Believe it or not, they're for work." Nicole sighed, plucking a bottle of rum from the highest shelf.

"You can smoke cigars in uniform?"

"No, that would be completely out of regs." Nicole replied, almost offended at the mere suggestion of impropriety. Wynonna nodded knowingly.

"Ah I see. Trying to butter up ole' Nedley. Pro-tip, Bandees are his favorite. He working you late tonight?" She asked, spilled her purchases sloppily on the counter. The cashier gave Wynonna the stink eye as she set about gathering the runaway limes.

The two continued chatting as they left the store. As they walked to their respective rides, Wynonna realized she forgot to re-attach her motorcycle's saddlebags after the last tune-up. The liquor store had packed her purchases in handle-less paper bags which couldn't be slung over the handlebars. Nicole was turning her key in the ignition when Wynonna ran over, knocking fervently on passenger window. After explaining her predicament, she begged Nicole to "help a sister out" and help transport her very important purchases to the homestead.

"Wynonna, I can't. I have to work tonight." Nicole explained. Her eyes noted the position of the sun in her mirror. She was cutting it close.

Wynonna thought through her options. For starters she could call someone for a ride. Doc was probably a no-go because he still couldn't manage his cell-phone without a helping hand. Waverly was also out, because the truck had a flat after their most recent bout of demon-hunting. She should probably get that fixed soon... She barely knew Rosita and didn't have her phone number. And Jeremy? After being forcibly re-assigned to Purgatory by Black Badge, he had next to nothing and only recently saved up the funds to buy himself a bicycle. For a moment she considered balancing the goods on the Harley's passenger seat, but to chance them crashing to the ground? That was an unacceptable risk. It was settled then. There was only one reasonable option. She let herself into the passenger side of the police cruiser and buckled herself in, much to Nicole's consternation.

"You're a cop, I'm a deputy, same-same." She reassured her, cracking open one of the whiskey bottles and taking a large swig. "And now that I'm whiskey soaked and reckless, no self-respecting officer of the peace would leave me drunk and alone in this parking lot. Think of all the trouble I could get into." She smirked and offered Nicole a red-vine. She declined. "I'll keep you company at the office! We'll get to know each other over a few drinks, it'll be great. I have an extra backpack there I can use to bring back the goods. When you're all wrapped up, you can drop me off back here and I'll be on my way."

Nicole watched Wynonna down more whiskey, and knew she wasn't getting out of this one. With the sun creeping down towards the horizon, she relented. "Alright, fine. But you'll have to wait. I'm not headed to the office."

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o.

The duo rolled through the front gates of Purgatory Cemetery and Wynonna burst out laughing. "Cemetery stake out, Haught? What, are you hunting vampires now?" Nicole rolled her eyes and pulled into a parking space. Dusk would fall soon, and there wasn't a moment to spare. "Do you have garlic in the glove compartment?" She asked humorously. "You think I'm kidding. It's true, they hate the stuff."

"No, Wynonna you're being ridiculous."

"Vampires are very serious! Geez, Nedley should know better. He should still be giving this stuff to Black Badge, even if Dolls is..." she trailed off.

"Look Wynonna, this is my job. I don't know what you're going on about vampires for, but I'm not hunting anything supernatural." Not yet anyways, she thought to herself. With Juan Carlo's tip-off about tonight, she suspected something other-wordly may rear its ugly head. She patted down her belt, checking for her flashlight, cuffs, and pepper spray. "If you're coming with me, keep quiet. Be on the look out for a man; five foot ten, about 170lbs, caucasian, curly brown hair. Answers to Josh." Nicole rattled off the description she'd committed to memory and set off towards the nearest mausoleum. There was a lot of ground to cover.

The two women began their trek through the graveyard. Wynonna refused to leave her whiskey behind, but quieted down per Nicole's request. Nicole turned the case facts over in her head. A missing persons report for Josh Miller was filed with Smith & Sons Private Investigators in July of 2016. He was a man with a tragic backstory. Childhood neglect in foster homes. Criminal activity into his early twenties. After those rough years, Josh worked to straighten his life out. But just as things were looking up, his fiance died in a accident which sent him spiraling into depression. He turned to his old habits, got caught dealing cocaine and was sent to jail for intent to distribute in Washington. He vanished into thin air a month after his release. No one had seen him or heard from him in nearly a year year.

So why was Purgatory's finest looking for Josh? A disturbing body-snatching incident occurred a week and a half ago at Purgatory Mortuary. The mortuary staff turned the security footage over to the Sheriff's office. As the culprit rounded a corner, the cameras caught a glimpse of the offender's face concealed in the shadows of a dark hoodie. Several database cross-references later, and Josh's mugshot fit the security footage to a T. Nicole almost snorted when she recalled Nedley originally assigned Lonnie to this case. The guy could hardly hold his coffee mug without dropping it. She almost felt sorry for him. But his loss was her opportunity. This is what she was born for.

They crept carefully along the outer fence bordering the outskirts of an old forest. When consulting the Maps app on her phone earlier that day, Nicole noted the name of the forest was "Old Forest". Classic Purgatory creativity. The glowing grass was swallowed by shadows as the sun set, and the tops of the gravestones around them dulled. Nothing seemed out of place. No stone overturned and no grave site disturbed. It was sometime between dusk and twilight, but there was no sign of anyone else on the grounds. It was all so terribly normal. Had she been played for a sucker?

Then a crackling roar split the air. A ball of fire erupted from the opposite side of the cemetery and set a leafless ash tree ablaze. Wynonna dropped her bottle in surprise and cursed as its contents soaked into the earth. Nicole barely registered Wynonna's tragedy as she set across the grounds, making her way through the dozens of rows at a dead sprint. She could hear a man screaming over the drumming of her feet, so she ran faster.

The scene was as bizarre as it was terrifying. One of the sites had dug up with a shovel, which rested haphazardly on top of the fresh mound of dirt beside the gaping hole. A body was positioned neatly in the open grave, and surrounding it were iron chains and mysterious symbols made of piles of white sugar. Horrible pools of blood were splashed around the site and the body, staining everything it touched a dark red. The light from the flames danced across the scene, crackling ferociously. On the ground rolling in agony was none other than Josh Miller, and towering above him was a hulking figure, hunched and menacing. The figure roared and stomped towards its victim who frantically scrabbled along the ground in the opposite direction. Miller's pants were ablaze. As he screamed, he slapped his legs in a frenzy in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames.

Nicole yelled loudly, aiming her handgun at the massive menace. It was a man, and his eyes glowed a bright yellow with black-slitted pupils. He bellowed and her stomach sank as the man's forehead split open at the seams. His face became a volcano, like lava pushing at the broken edges of the earth's crust. Time slowed. Her thoughts turned to the confrontation outside the hospital. Her bullets made little to no difference in that confrontation. Would this fire-breathing man be just as resilient as that revenant? Fortunately, she didn't have to make the decision to shoot.

Wynonna ripped a tree branch from the ash tree more massive than she had any right to be wielding. She jumped in front of Nicole and with a single stroke sent the man crashing to the ground. He snarled and tried to push to his feet. Undeterred, Wynonna jumped atop him and slugged him square in the jaw. His fire went out cold, and he fell flat on his back without another peep. Nicole rushed to Miller's aid. She ripped her police jacket off and smothered his legs as he howled in agony. Within moments the fire was quenched and the confrontation was over. She scanned the scene, blocking out Miller's whimpers and listening for other signs of trouble. She heard nothing over the hissing of the flames.

"You dumb lizard, where have you been?" Wynonna said angrily. Nicole picked up a twinge of softness in the anger.

"I-I thought it w-would wo-work!" Miller gibbered and his eyes rolled back in his head. "He said... he p-promised he would bring my Annie ba-back. To me! I just h-had to ask." Nicole tried to soothe the raving madnan.

"Josh, you're in shock." She said evenly, elevating his legs using her balled-up jacket as a platform. "You've been badly burned and I need you to stop moving." She struggled to restrain his movements while reaching for her radio.

"B-but when I asked, he la-laughed. Laughed in my face! He's back but he said he would never help me because I would fail him." 

"Dispatcher, is Officer Haught reporting codes 11-41 and 904." She spoke clearly into her radio. "Victim is badly burned, requesting ambulance transportation and fire suppression at Purgatory Cemetery immediately." 

"Ah shit, that's B-train." Wynonna glanced over and down into the grave. "This looks bad, we need to get him out of here."

"Fire is contained but may spread rapidly, over." She cut the radio and turned back to Miller, but he was losing consciousness fast. "The ambulance should be here fast. The hospital isn't too far." She unclipped the handcuffs from her belt and turned towards the now silent man laying prone on the ground.

"Woah woah, hold up there Haught." Wynonna stood up and prevented her from moving closer. "I wasn't talking about your charbroiled voodoo freak here. This is Dolls, my boss. The one we said was hiding out in the woods and might be... a dragon."

"This fire-breathing guy is your boss...? How do you meet these people?" 

"Everyone and everything weird ends up in Purgatory one way or another. I don't know what that says about you but..."

"Wynonna, your boss burned a man alive. I can't just let him go!"

"What, so you can put him in a small metal cage next to a bunch of criminals who will escape once he burns the walls down?" Nicole's brows furrowed. She had a point. "Listen to me, Rosita has been working on a cure for him for weeks. A medication that will keep this lizard beast asleep inside him for good. She's a brilliant biochemical engineer, and god knows how Doc knows her, but she's good. She can fix this." She paused, staring at Nicole with an intensity that came naturally to her. "I won't let you take him."

Nicole felt torn between her sense of responsibility as an officer and her growing working knowledge of this crazy town. Did she let an arsonist dragon man go free with the somewhat inebriated heir to a demonic curse? That sentence sounded crazy in her own head, let alone speaking it out loud. What real choice did she have? Wynonna was right. Purgatory's police force wasn't equipped to deal with something like this.

Nicole relented on one condition. They had to get Dolls into the cruiser before the ambulance arrived for Miller, but Wynonna would hit him once more to ensure her police cruiser didn't go up in flames in the meantime. Wynonna instantly obliged.

"Don't you worry, Dolls." Wynonna huffed as she maneuvered him into the back seat. "We're going to fix you. And if it doesn't... well it doesn't matter. We'll get you a nice little terrarium."

"Where did you move the cigars?"

"What do you mean?" Wynonna grunted, tucking Doll's legs behind the passenger seat. "I didn't touch them."

"And the rum! What have you done with it?"

"Nothing, I swear! I don't have it."  Nicole looked around in bemusement and double checked the trunk. Was she losing her mind? She heard Wynonna mutter something under her breath about the rum always being gone. Nicole had half a mind to frisk her, but the siren of the approaching ambulance reminded her of the problems at hand.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

A slender gentleman in a fitted black suit chewed thoughtfully on a cigar. He puffed out a quivering ring and smacked his lips. He would always favor Cubans, but this was a fine local brand. He would have to keep an eye out for Bandees in the future. It wasn't normally his style to accept offerings without offering his services, but this was an atypical evening. The procurer of the Bandees and rum would have to settle for an I.O.U., at least for the time being. He was running late for a prior commitment. 

"Gentlemen," he bowed and tipped his top hat. "Please excuse my tardiness."

The shortest of the three men spit into a filthy water bottle, salivating gratuitously from the dip packed tightly in his gums. A tidy man with overly-slicked hair stood behind the short man, leering over his shoulder from behind beady spectacles. Their leader, the wiry man with greasy hair and sallow cheekbones, stepped forward.

"It appears you are quite popular one this evening." He rattled. "Our appreciation for you taking time out of your busy schedule."

"And miss the opportunity to speak with a colleague? Even one as talented as I pursue professional development from time to time. You know what they say. If you're not learning, you're not living." He chortled. "Although I wouldn't go so far to say either of us are living..."

"You know who we are then."

"But of course. I am keenly aware of the reputation of you and your companions. I often hear their echos of damnation from the crossroads." The greasy man shifted and pulled a blackened hand out from his coat pocket. His skin was charred, a blistered casualty of an other-worldly fire.

"My bells bind souls to flesh and bone. But things are complicated when it comes to those whose souls have been burned out. My workaround is crude. I have managed three, but this body..." He shook his arm with emphasis, the burn wounds popping and bleeding. "Is limited."

"We'd like to hire your services." Wheedled the man in the spectacles. His left eye twitched constantly.

"I ferry the living between the mortal planes to the here-after." The slender gentleman stated as a matter of fact, tucking his smoking cigar behind his ear. He pulled the gifted bottle of rum out of thin air and twisted open the cap. "I dig their graves. I lead them to the underworld. Those without souls are quite another matter. I carry no jurisdiction over demons."

"You have done it before." The short man grinned. He wore sunglasses even though the sun had long since set. "Don't bother lying, I can read right through you."

"True, but I overstepped my bounds. The consequences were unpleasant."

"What if we could alleviate those repercussions?" The spectacle man wheezed. The slender man pondered, swishing the liquor from cheek to cheek.

"I'm listening." He drawled. The greasy man pulled a slip of paper out from his coat pocket and handed it over. Opening the paper gingerly, the slender man unfolded it and read. The contents pleased him. He grinned from ear to ear and his skeletal face-tattoo curled.

"Do we have a deal, Baron?" 

The Baron Samedi drew deeply on his cigar and accepted the outstretched hand. "You have captured my interest." He snapped his fingers and a hunched, child-sized being popped out of the ground. This creature was dressed in fine black suit and covered in white skeletal tattoos, a miniature Baron in his own right. It walked boisterously, doffed its top hat, and bowed. "This Guede loa will act as your guide and assistant for the rites. Come to me with the harvest and your end of the bargain, and I will instruct you on the particulars." The Guede beckoned for the three men to follow.

"But gentleman," the Baron called to them and they stopped in their tracks. "My teachings have limits. They won't work on him."

The man in the sunglasses laughed. "I told you not to lie Baron. But I can see why you would. You have every reason to be scared."

.o0o. CHAPTER 6 END .o0o.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looking for more information on the Baron? Check out Nicole's case files or this Wikipedia article if you're confused.  
> http://www.purgatorysd.com/  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Samedi


	7. The Hourglass in the Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7 is now up! It's no true cross-over, but perhaps you'll notice the little nod to Will Gorski from Sens8. Since I've decided Nicole is from Chicago, I couldn't resist.  
> -tDoE

Nicole drove to Shorty's well within the the prescribed speed limits, much to her passenger's chagrin. She tried quoting "who watches the watchmen" to explain why she never sped in non-critical situations, but received nothing but grief in return. Wynonna pulled out her phone and began fervently texting. Between dings, she glanced at the unconscious man in the back seat.

"Doc will meet us at Shorty's, he's bringing Waverly." Wynonna said as she crossed her arms and looked distractedly out the window. "I texted Jeremy too. He's at an open mike night, or something, but promised to come over. He and Rosita have been working really hard on this..."

"If it works, they could market it as an antacid and make millions." Nicole remarked offhandedly. She was still processing the fact that the man in her backseat could belch fire. With that terrifying thought in mind, she made sure every stop she made was as slow and smooth as possible. The thought of trying to explain to Nedley why her cruiser was charred from the inside out made her cringe. If she told the truth; that a dragon-man she found in a graveyard 'lost his cool', so to speak; she may as well turn in her badge now. The back-lit Shorty's sign emerged in the distance and Nicole released a small sigh of relief. They were nearly there.

As the two women struggled to extricate the slumbering Deputy Marshal Dolls from the backseat, Doc's tell-tale Camaro peeled into the parking lot at breakneck speeds. Doc leapt to open the twin doors, and several grunts later they laid their human cargo down on a small cot in the basement of Shorty's. Dolls was no small individual. Nicole unbuttoned the top button of her uniform and fanned herself with the brim of her hat, warm from the effort.

She scanned the room, taking in the scene. A large work bench took up the entire wall next to the staircase. The table was filled with test tubes brimming with lurid green and murky brown liquids, bunsen burners in a makeshift ventilation shaft, and titrating burettes that dripped into beakers with all manner of crazy rubber tubing. The smell of raw alcohol and peaches wafted from the various concoctions. Doc strode back and forth between the beakers, prodding here and there. The Earp sisters sat by Doll's bedside, speaking in hushed tones.

The mad scientist herself flicked a fully loaded syringe with her middle finger. She wore a set of blue latex gloves and a long black apron. The clear liquid appeared to meet her standards, and she strode over to the cot where Dolls lay. 

"Hold these." She said brusquely, pushing a tray of medical supplies into Nicole's hands. Rosita ripped open an alcohol wipe and began swabbing the inside of Dolls' elbow. She swiped thick rubber band off the tray and tied off an arm while Doc brought over a tall metal IV stand. "The serum isn't ready yet, we'll need to keep him under."

"So you're drugging him." Wynonna snapped.

"I'm sedating him," Rosita replied with a similar bite, "to keep him from burning everything to the ground."

"For how long?" Waverly asked. Nicole watched as the younger Earp clenched and unclenched her fists.

"As long as it takes." With a small grunt of effort, she clipped the syringe into a small socket on the IV bag.

"And how long is that?" Wynonna asked. The frustration poured off her in waves.

"I don't know, Wynonna." Rosita replied tersely. "I've never exactly done anything like this before. Developing catalysts that slow down enzyme reactions? Sure, been there done that. But develop a magical blocker serum to put out demon fire? This is an entirely new ballgame." The upstairs door banged open, and Jeremy jogged down the stairs down. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

"What took you so long?" Rosita asked, crossing her arms.

"Someone stole my bike tire." He doubled over and heaved to catch his breath. "Had t-had to run... all the way here." He waved dismissively. "Don't worry 'bout me, I'm good."

"Don't worry, we weren't." Wynonna quipped. Waverly opened her mouth to chastise her sister when everyone in the room jumped.

Without warning, the Deputy Marshal awoke with an ear splitting roar. He raged against the straps holding him to the cot, and snapped one arm free before anyone had time to react. Nicole dropped the tray of supplies to the ground and flung herself on top of Dolls' legs. She could see a flurry of hands and bodies from the corner of her eye as everyone joined in the effort to restrain him. Wynonna wrapped one arm around his neck and pressed the other firmly against the top of his skull in a sleeper hold. His lizard eyes bugged out of his sockets. Choking sputters came out in place of crackling embers, and his struggles ceased as quickly as they began.

"Your sedative sucks!" The heir raged, prodding Rosita aggressively. Doc pushed between the two women, doing his best to prevent things from coming to blows.

"Hey, watch it! I don't have to do this you know. I am doing you a huge favor, you should be thanking me!" Rosita spat.

"Do I smell peaches?"

"God! Not now, Jeremy."

"No, Cyclosarin. It's a chemical compound that smells like peaches." He plucked a vial of colorless liquid from a rack of test tubes and swished it around gently. "How much of this did you use?"

"One and a half cc's," she shrugged, "why?" Jeremy laughed.

"You know this stuff is flammable, right?" He pointed at Dolls. "Fire lizard, flammable compounds? No wonder this woke him up. You might as well have dumped a double shot of espresso into his veins!" They devolved into science-speak, debating the technicalities of chemical activation energies, while Doc continued to pacify an agitated Wynonna.

Nicole glanced down at her watch. It was past nine in the evening. She needed to follow-up on Josh Miller's condition at the hospital and set a watch on him. Incapacitated or no, Josh was looking at several counts of breaking and entering and body snatching. As an officer of the law, she couldn't allow a criminal like him to go unobserved in a clinic with innocent people. Speaking of body snatching, she had left the body of "B-Train" in the hands of the mortuary technicians who arrived only moments after the ambulance and fire brigade. They would need an explanation, and word would need to be sent to the deceased's family of the body's recovery. Then there was the investigation itself. She barely managed to put up caution tape around the crime scene and get instructions relayed to the Dispatcher before Wynonna nearly drove off with her police cruiser without her.

In Chicago they worked in pairs. Her old partner and mentor, Will, always had her back. She grinned as she remembered working cases with him late into the evening. He was always eating this imported yogurt from Iceland, was it Skyr? She couldn't remember. In Purgatory they didn't have the manpower to work in teams. More often than not, they were responding to reports of public drunkenness or to livestock blocking one of the roads. One officer normally did the trick. But here, at least for tonight, she was alone with a long list of to-dos. She sighed deeply. If only she could stop time to get it all done.

"Do you need to go?" Came a voice right by her ear. Nicole jumped. She had been so wrapped up in her thoughts, she hadn't noticed Waverly standing right under her nose. Her hands snapped to her belt, as they were suddenly unsure of what to do with themselves.

"I mean I can stay. I just don't know how useful I can be here right now," she said, shifting her weight to her heels, "and I have a lot on my plate. I'm one of two officers on duty tonight, and the work keeps piling up."

"Oh god, you mean you're going back to the office?" The look on her face was nothing short of appalled.

"Ee-yup. That's the nature of the business."

"I guess should thank you again. For driving my drunk sister around and dealing with our crazy lizard boss." Nicole could feel another smile creeping onto her face. She ducked her head slightly, pawing at the dusty ground with the heel of her boot.

"I think I'll find a way to manage." She looked back at Waverly whilst digging something out of her coat pocket. "Here, your sister dropped these." She offered the shorter woman several limes. Wynonna had dropped them in the passenger seat of her car. "I figure she's already forgot about them." Waverly grinned, accepting the limes and tucking them away into her own coat. "Well, I'll be off then!" Nicole excused herself and took the stairs two at a time.

"Wait!" Nicole turned, stopping halfway up the staircase. "You forgot this." Waverly stood at the bottom of the stairs with Nicole's hat in her hands. Nicole hopped down a few steps, and accepted the outstretched white stetson. Their fingers grazed and her heart fluttered.

"Well Waverly Earp, it's finally my turn to thank you."

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o.

"For the last time, Josh. Annie is dead. She died years ago."

"He can bring her back! He promised me!"

Nicole wiped his spittle off her face with the back of her hand. She's seen animals go rabid, and Josh Miller's face was as feral as they come. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen. His lank hair was askew and dripped with perspiration. His burns were encircled with swathes of thick, mummy bandages. But he paid them no mind and sat up like a shot, rattling the hand-cuffs that secured him to the metal bars of the hospital bed. Nicole had argued with the doctor to restrain him before he woke. She was glad she did. A small crowd of nurses hovered around the door and blatantly eavesdropped on the situation.

"I told him I would give him everything I had," he barked, "but he wouldn't take it. Said he had better offers on the table."

"Who, Josh?"

"The Baron. Baron Samedi."

"Okay, so the Baron paid you to steal Bryce Cooper's..."

"No one paid me, you stupid bitch!" He raged. "I was the debtor. I lost everything, you even took my gifts from me! He was MINE!"

Delusional, and aggressive she jotted in her notebook. She rubbed the crease in her forehead and snapped her journal shut. They had been talking in circles all night. The story she could piece together was as bizarre as the crime scene itself. As far as Nicole could tell, Josh truly believed he could summon his deceased lover from the grave by sacrificing someone already dead in some sort of Satanic ritual. Nedley was going to love this one. Nicole remembered the flaming inferno of the revenant Wynonna 'sent down south' outside this very hospital. Whether or not Josh's ritual was possible, she felt relieved it was interrupted by the Deputy Marshal Dolls impromptu return.

"Get some rest, Mr. Miller. We'll speak again when you're more coherent." She gathered her things and swept out the door, pushing by the cluster of nurses gossiping like hens. She felt her feet stumble under her and glanced up at the clock on the wall. Past midnight. She turned towards the vending machines, praying they weren't out of energy drinks. She doubted she could make it home without a caffeine hit.

"Shame about that man, sounds like a loony." Said a thin man in a black suit sipping something from a styrofoam cup at the snack bar. He gestured down the hall where Nicole had walked out of. "Everyone out here can hear him."

"Yeah." Nicole grimaced, punching in the code for a can of Beaver Buzz. "He's got issues. But don't we all?"

"Ain't that the truth, sweetheart?" Nicole turned to remark that she was nobody's sweetheart, but the words died on her lips. When she looked at him, really looked at him, the air swam in front of her eyes. He grew a foot taller. His suit clung to his bones. His eyes were yellow and sunken behind a painted skeletal face. Was it painted, or real bone? His knuckled hands popped as he twisted a bottle of rum from his pocket. Nicole remembered seeing that bottle in the backseat of her car. He tipped it into his cup and made a shushing motion, the heady stink of his breath rolling over her. She blinked and suddenly he was a very average, normal gentleman grinning at her with a smile full of secrets.

"You look tired, love. Perhaps we were not meant to speak tonight." He snapped his fingers and pulled a calling card out of thin air. He dropped it into her upturned hat and smiled. His teeth were a blinding white and as square as gravestones. "I await your call with bated breath, Officer. Thank you for the gifts." He turned and walked away, leaving Nicole with the card pinched tight between her fingers and a sick feeling in her stomach.

'The Baron Samedi'

'Loa of Resurrection and Greeter of the Dead'

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o.

The motley crew trudged over barrow mounds someplace between life and death led by their tiny, skeletal guide. Hours felt like days, and days felt like hours. Time was fickle like that in the crossroads. The whole place was wreathed in tendrils of white fog. The fog would sometimes swell open to reveal a path, but the Guede warned them not to pursue these tempting lures. Only the guides and those who died the true death could see the ways ahead. So they walked blindly in the mists, their faith in their guide utterly complete.

After an eternity, or perhaps it was only minutes, they happened upon a dark slab of stone. It was roughly the size of a casket and sat next to a shallow lake which reflected the empty sky. The Guede pressed a tiny key into an invisible hole, and the top of the stone sheared away into nothingness. Then it fished out a large jar etched with mysterious designs and black as squid ink. The Guede danced to the water's edge, set the jar down, and began scrabbling around in the sand. It plucked three, fine threads that ran out into the lake and began to pull them in with a practiced motion. The short man with the sunglasses and the tidy man waited eagerly at the water's edge and laughed an awful, guttural sound when the ripples reached the shore.

While his companions hollered and hooted, the greasy man in the trenchcoat stayed back and reached into the hollow stone. He plucked out several corded amulets and an empty hourglass with the utmost of care. He grunted in satisfaction and tucked the items carefully inside his coat.

"Luvart, we have them. We have them! Luke and I have them!" Shouted the tidy man. He held the base of the jar tightly as the Guede plucked three tiny lights from the ends of the strings and dropped them into the darkness. They fluttered and sputtered like fireflies.

"Yes, we most certainly do, Seymour." Luvart graveled, pushing his greasy hair back from his sunken cheekbones. "Now, we need to get the sand."

As Luvart and his companions celebrated along the edge of the lake, a pair of eyes shrouded in the mists studied them carefully from afar. The eyes pulled a curious contraption from his front pocket and pinched a bit of dirt from the ground below. He tasted it, frowning curiously beneath his white, walrus mustache. He smacked his lips and turned several wheels and switches on the contraption. If he had the location set just right, his closest agent should receive his message within minutes.

.o0o. CHAPTER 7 END .o0o.


	8. Linda, from Finance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life has been busy, so updates will be slower for a bit. I had ambitions to cover a lot more ground in this chapter, but I'd rather upload now than wait ages to finish it. Besides, there's always next chapter!  
> -tDoE

High on caffeine and paranoia, Nicole made it home from the hospital in one piece. She collapsed on top of her bed covers and fell into a deep sleep. The past twelve hours had exhausted her. Although she and many of Purgatory's citizens now slumbered in these wee hours of the morning, others were still awake.

Juan Carlos walked under the caution tape cordoning the cemetery. Even if there had been a dozen witnesses in broad daylight, no one would have seen him do it. He had a knack for only being seen when he wanted to be seen, and he was very good at it. He bent over and plucked a burned cigar stump from a footprint in the grass. It had been vigorously flattened by the heel of a shoe. He hoped the conversation between Officer Haught and the Baron had been... fruitful. He dropped the stump into the dirt and walked purposefully through the graves sites. The mechanic stopped at a particularly plain headstone and dragged his calloused fingertips across the engraving.

"Oh, Mattie." He sighed. "I'm tired of visiting cemeteries." Wearied lines creased his brow as he crouched down, peering at her tomb in the dead of night.

"You, me and Mari, Constance, and Gretta... we made a good team. But I've lost all of you, to dust or to madness. You and I were the last. Without everyone joined to focus the Sight, my visions are blurry and unclear. Sporadic and hard to control. It's hard for me to tell the difference between what was, is, and can still be. But that night, when we Saw him rise under the hands of his wives, that never came to pass." His face screwed in confusion as he chewed his bottom lip.

"Those horrible Widows are still locked in their prison. But of that we were so sure! That they would come forth and be defeated by the heir. But something changed. I quested and Looked further than I ever believed I could See alone. I learned a woman was missing. She left a hole in this place, a hole that fate intends to fill. You of all people knew fate always finds a way." Juan Carlos grimaced and peered up at the moon.

"I fear Bulshar's chosen have returned. They will stop at nothing to reclaim the fallen and raise their master. My powers are waning and our charge is in danger. But I found her, the missing woman, and I brought her here to Purgatory. Her name is Nicole. You would have liked her. I hope it isn't too late... The cracks are growing wider, and it's only a matter of time before the Furies find her." The tired man pulled a rosary from under his collar. He fiddled with the beads, imbuing small prayers between his fingers.

"You lived through three times the winters I've seen, but still. I am jealous. Someday I too wish to rest."

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o.  

The sedative wasn't working. Dolls woke again and again with a blistering fury, the time between each awakenings shorter than the last. Wynonna would rush in and throw her weight into his neck until his eyes bugged out of his head and his body slackened. After the 5th time in less than six hours, the heir could contain her frustration no longer. She railed against Jeremy and Rosita, insisting they work harder to keep him under.

"I can't keep choking him out like this! He's going to get brain damage!"

"If we up the dosage any more, we put his body's systems at risk of shutting down permanently." Rosita stated matter of factly.

"She's right." Jeremy agreed. "We're talking adrenals, lymphatic, nervous, everything." He whisked the sedative solution out of Wynonna's reach. "We've got him on more than one and a half the normal dose for someone his size already. It doesn't matter what kind of demon hybrid he is, body weight is the driving factor."

Wynonna collapsed on the bottom stair and dropped her head into her hands. She hated feeling helpless. When she felt helpless, her go-to coping mechanism involved dropping everything and running away. But this wasn't something she could run away from. Not this time. "We need more time..." She moaned from between her fingers.

Waverly perked up at Wynonna's words. The younger Earp had been nodding off over a large pile of technical books and papers, looking for clues to help complete the cure. "Time..." She mouthed to herself. "God Wynonna, you're a genius!"

"I am?" She could count on one finger the number of times the words 'Wynonna' and 'genius' were used together in a sentence. She watched in confusion as Waverly extricated herself from the piles of papers and pulled her phone from her pocket.

"Time is the answer. We need to stop time..." 

"During my research into our family history, I remember reading a passage in one of Wyatt Earp's correspondences. He reported finding a demon that could manipulate the passage of time within a certain geographical radius. He called it a Sandman." Wynonna rolled her eyes as Waverly typed furiously on her phone's screen.

"Oh yeah, I've heard of them from other Black Badge researchers!" Jeremy replied enthusiastically. "I've never had the chance to observe one myself, but every paper I've read indicates that they're incredible specimens to study."

"Well, is anybody here a Sandman?" Wynonna asked sarcastically.

"Back in junior high, this guy Robbie was spreading rumors about one of the history teachers, Mr. Apergis. It was weird stuff." Waverly continued, scrunching up her face in concentration. "One time Robbie swore he saw Mr. Apergis eating lunch at his desk. When he turned down the hall, he saw him handing out a detention slip to a student wearing completely different clothes. When he looked back at his desk, Mr. Apergis was gone! I thought Robbie was just an idiot, but maybe he was on to something. Mr. A had a habit of showing up at the right time... or the wrong time. Depends who you asked."

"Why do you even remember this?" Her sister asked, wondering why anyone could remember anything so mundane about their teenage years.

"This is him. Andreas Apergis." She placed the screen inches from her sister's face. Andreas Apergis was old and wrinkled, but in a wisened way. His lips pursed together in perpetual disapproval. "But he's unlisted," she lamented, "and he's removed himself from all the identity search sites I know of. I can't find his address anywhere. The only mention of him I found was an article in the Purgatory Paper from two years about his role in organizing an antique clock convention."

"Are we seriously going to bank on your middle school gossip?" Wynonna scorned. "He looked old, and that's not even a recent photo. How do we know he's still alive and not feeding the worms? And what if he's not a 'Sandman' and just an old Purgatorian?"

"Do you have a better idea?" Waverly was met with silence. "I didn't think so."

"Okay, so how do we find this guy?" Rosita asked, tapping her nails rhythmically on the table in front of her. A small grin crept onto Waverly's face. She knew just who to ask.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o.  

Nicole's alarm clock sounded promptly at 0600. She groaned and slapped haphazardly at her bedside table, trying to stop the dreadful ringing. Two and a half hours of sleep was far from ideal. The sleepy officer crawled out of bed still dressed in her uniform from the evening before. She hardly had the energy to stand for a shower, so she sat in the tub as the scalding water pounded down around her. Both her eyes stared vacantly ahead as her habits drove her body through her routine automatically. A tiny spark rose in them as the heady scent of her morning coffee began to fill the kitchen.

Suddenly, she found herself standing in the bullpen with a half eaten bagel in one hand and her coffee, half-finished, in the other. She glanced around at her lively coworkers and wondered how she had managed to drive to work safely in her zombified state. Maybe she could catch a moment's sleep in her car during her lunch hour. 

"Late night?" A stern-faced lady asked Nicole over the bridge of her spectacles. Dressed in floral patterns and bright greens, she worked her shawl like it was made from mink and featured on the latest issue of Vogue. Linda from Finance was the queen of gossip in the municipal building. She was never caught without a trashy tabloid in hand and always wore garishly bright shades of nail polish. For 27 years, Linda ensured everyone got the right pay on the right day, but that was secondary to keeping tabs on the comings and goings of everyone's personal lives. Linda attached herself to Nicole immediately after arriving in Purgatory, and although she ceaselessly tried to convince Nicole to divulge her deepest and darkest secrets, the two had developed a curious friendship.

Nicole flopped down in her chair and waved Linda in. "How could you tell?"

"For one, I could shoplift several large hams using those bags under your eyes." She wagged her finger disparagingly. "Two, you look like you did your hair in the dark while hanging from the rafters with two left hands!" Nicole cringed. Did she really look that bad?

"And this?" Linda snatched the half eaten bagel and inspected it closely. "A chocolate chip bagel? With pineapple cream cheese? You are out of your damn mind, woman. This is disgusting." No wonder that bagel had left an odd taste in her mouth. She could have sworn they were raisins at the shop. Much to her delight, Linda passed her a toasted everything bagel slathered with butter. "How did you ever function without me?"

"I suppose I didn't!" Nicole joked as she stuffed the warm, crispy bread in her belly. Linda sat on the edge of the desk and crossed her ankles. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Nicole expectantly.

"So, who was the lucky someone?" She asked bluntly. Nicole began choking on her breakfast and pounded her chest.

"Geez Linda, no one!" She tried to recover, gulping her now room temperature coffee to ease the irritation in her throat.

"Come now," Linda chastened, "it's plain that you've taken a shining to somebody. You've been acting different for weeks, and with your looks I'm surprised it took this long! So spill. How was it?" She lowered her voice surreptitiously. "Who was it? Was it a 'lady friend'?" Nicole reddened with embarrassment as Linda used awkward air-quotes. "Not that I have a problem with that. Wish I went that way. Most of the men in this town are absolute swine. Well, save a few." She conceded, glancing over at Nedley's office.

"Look, Linda, it was just work stuff. Honest." Because a skull-faced man who might be stalking her totally qualified as work-stuff. "A lot of things are piling up right now." At that moment, Waverly Earp walked through the office doors and looked straight at her. She waved urgently, and Nicole couldn't pretend not to notice. Linda also took notice and smiled knowingly.

"Ah, there it is! I knew it."

"No, Linda." Nicole used her no nonsense voice and began to shoo Linda out towards her own office.

"But I think Waverly is an excellent fit for you!" Linda whispered excitedly. "It makes sense, really."

"I swear to God do not start any rumors. Nothing happened, and nothing will happen." Linda stifled a giggle, prompting Nicole to raise her eyebrows. "I mean it Linda, don't go telling people there's something between me and Waverly Earp. Because there isn't." 

"Okay, honey." The gossip queen snagged a peppermint from the counter and popped it into her mouth. "Keep telling yourself that." With a wink and a smile, she sauntered out of the office and made a point of over-enthusiastically greeting Waverly good morning. Nicole knew she must be terribly satisfied with herself. With far more pep in her step than Nicole, Waverly came up and leaned heavily on the counter.

"Do you have a minute?" Nicole felt both eyes scan her from head to toe. Was there something there? "Are you feeling alright? You don't look so great."

"So I've been told." Nicole replied dryly. "What's up? It's pretty early for you to be here, is everything okay with Dolls?"

"That's the thing, it's not." She said in a hushed tone. "We know someone who can help, but we don't know where he is."

"And you want me to pull his personal information to try and track him down." She grimaced. Using official systems for anything other than the demands of the job or legal inquiries was a big no-no.

"Look, I wouldn't be asking if we had another choice. Besides it's only an address! It's not like I need his banking information. It should be visible on his vehicle registration."

"You sound like you've done this before." She said wryly. Waverly gave only the most innocent of smiles in response. Her conscience rose up again to remind Nicole to make the right choice. She had certain obligations that her profession demanded. Ones that pretty girls with pretty smiles should have no sway over.

"Fine," she said, her conscience wallowing in anguish, "but on one condition. If I help you find him, and your situation gets out of hand, that's on my head. If you're involving civilians then I need to be there." Even exhausted and clearly worn thin from the previous evening's work, Nicole's shoulders straightened and her chest puffed slightly. A protector through and through.

Waverly smiled to herself.

She liked that.

.o0o. CHAPTER 8 END .o0o.

 


	9. The Sand of the Clockmaker, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is a go! I have some other life-projects going on at the moment, so I'm shooting for an every other week update. Please enjoy =D

First it was the newest Chainsmokers single. Followed by Cyndi Lauper, an advertisement for Tide detergent, G-Easy, then Tiesto. Nicole's spirits lifted as the radio landed on "Zombies" by the Cranberries, but then it was Kanye, that Chainsmoker's single again, and some unintelligible screaming. Several dozen stations later, Nicole slapped Doc's eager fingers and very pointedly told him to leave the radio alone. He apologized profusely, as they did not have such devices in his day (early radios were invented eight years after his imprisonment, and would not be commercially available until the 1920's) and he was still greatly enamored with the technology. She reigned in her temper and returned her focus to the road, but not before catching a glimpse of Waverly in her back mirror giggling silently.

To get Officer Haught out of the office, the younger Earp sister phoned in a fake distress call from the parking lot. Nicole watched out of the corner of her eye as Waverly muffled her voice with a clump of scarf. The dispatcher took the bait, promising to send an Officer to help clear Mr. Jensen's sleeping cattle out of the streets right away. Without missing a beat, Nicole jumped up and told the dispatcher she would handle the cows. After helping haul Dolls out of Shorty's back entrance and into Wynonna's truck, Doc, Waverly, and Rosita piled into her car with the Earp heir, the others in close pursuit. Jeremy volunteered to continue administering Dolls' sedative while in transit, adding that he wouldn't mind cradling Dolls' head safely and securely in his lap the whole way.

The GPS dinged, signaling their arrival at 12 Sunset Ridge. The house was an old, narrow Victorian. The mint and forest green paint-job was old and faded. It was accented by grey, tilted roofs and elaborate trimmings lining the gutters. All the curtains were drawn tight, hiding the house's mysteries from prying passerbys and nosy neighbors. A slight, dark haired girl watched them approach from the porch with a broom clutched tightly in her hands. She introduced herself as Poppy Apergis, Mr. Apergis's daughter.

"Is there something the matter?" Asked Poppy from behind her hair, nervously eyeing Nicole's police uniform from head to toe.

"I'm an old student of his, and we were hoping..."

"We know what your father is," Rosita cut Waverly off, getting straight to the point, "and we need his help. We need more time."

At that last word, Poppy's eyes glanced frantically towards the front door. Fight or flight. The girl was wondering whether or not she could throw herself in front of the door before the others could reach it. Every muscle in her body coiled tightly, ready to pounce. Her actions confirmed Waverly's suspicion about Mr. Apergis's supernatural identity.

"Ma'am," drawled Doc soothingly, "I ensure you my colleagues and I mean no disrespect upon you and your family. However, our need is dire. A man is in danger of losing his humanity. Should that happen he could hurt a lot of people in this town." He extended his hand toward her with his palm up. "If your father he may be our only chance to save these lives and relieve us of putting down a friend like a rabid beast." Her shoulders loosened and the glint in her eyes changed from panicked to wary. Doc's words soothed her, as was his intent.

"Of course, it would only be if he were inclined to consent." He continued graciously. "We have no intention of forcing anybody's hand. All we ask is a brief audience."

For several, long moments, the standoff continued. The group watched as Doc remained steady and calm. He courted Poppy's invitation like he were coaxing a stray dog to feed from his hand. She relented and leaned her broom against the railing.

"Follow me." She said quietly.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

Nicole had never seen so many clocks in all her life. The house's walls were covered in timepieces both large and small. Even the tabletops were strewn with various pocket-watches and their constituent gear-pieces. Father Time himself would have been put to shame. The man behind it all, if he was to be called a man at all, sat in a mahogany armchair. It was not hard to imagine that he once commanded a grand presence, regaling his audience with stories of grandeur and mystery. His eyes still exuded authority, but his body told a different tale. From beneath his rich, red robe, the frail and withered man was sustained by the IV taped to his arm. The pinpricks running from the pockets of his elbows to the backs of his hands made it clear this was a daily occurrence. Sallow cheeked and haggard, he nonetheless paid rapt attention to his unexpected guests.

"To save your friend, you need to stop him from waking, hmm? Quite a bold request from a gaggle of strangers accompanied by a very dangerous woman." He glared pointedly at Wynonna who bristled at the attention. Peacemaker hung snugly in its holster, only a few finger widths away from her shooting hand. "But you amuse me. I am old and past my prime. Although we age over many centuries, we Sandmen are mortal. Funny really, I can stop time for everyone but myself. But perhaps I shall feel young again. It has been a while since I have exercised my talents." He signaled Poppy with a small wave and she slipped into the next room.

"Of course, I can only keep three of you awake to actually do the work. The rest of you will sleep along with your friend, along with everyone in Ghost River County."

"Wait what?" Wynonna spat. Nicole glanced her way and noted the throbbing vein in the heir's temple. "No, it's everyone or no deal."

"I'm afraid it is all or nothing. Without a bit of my sand to counteract the effects, you shall succumb." Mr. Apergis lamented. "I only have three talismans. The rest were broken or lost over the years and I have not been inclined to craft more."

"Then make more! Put that sand of yours in a bottle and be done with it." The heir threw her hands up as though it were the most obvious solution in the world. Poppy crept back into the room holding a small chest containing three small pendants made of glass. He plucked one gently from its hollow inset and held it reverently between the tips of his fingers. A deep, honey glow spilled forth and reflected in his eyes. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the deep, carved lines of his cheeks seemed to melt away.

"Time magic is extremely volatile. I suspect you do not have several months to wait?" Silence. "I didn't think so."

Everyone looked at each other. Only three of them could stay awake... Nicole shuddered.

"It has to be us." Waverly gestured to herself, Rosita, and Jeremy. "The people working on the cure need to be the ones awake. Otherwise what's the point?" Nicole's every instinct screamed bloody murder. This wasn't what she had in mind when she agreed to help Waverly. And although the exhaustion she felt in her bones rejoiced at the thought of a nap, Purgatory-wide, indefinite, demonic induced sleep wasn't exactly what she had in mind. Her inner voice, who wasn't used to being ignored so frequently, reminded her of her creed to serve and protect. How could she justify the involvement of every civilian in Purgatory in demon-magic? What if it all went horribly wrong, and nobody woke up?

"This is a bad idea." The officer rumbled slowly.

"Not just bad, it's a horrible idea! I can't believe we're even considering this." Wynonna raged. "How do we know we can trust him? I'm not leaving you alone for what, hours? Weeks? Months?" 

"I know you're scared, but remember we're doing this to save Dolls." Waverly said with a lowered voice. She gripped her sister's shoulders and squeezed gently, trying to calm her.

"No, I have to be here. To protect you." Wynonna pleaded. The fear of losing another person near and dear to her heart evident in her tone. "What if something happens?"

"Yes, completely agree." Nicole added. "If something goes wrong, we can't help protect you."

Waverly turned and noted the concern written all over the young officer's face. From the way her eyebrows knitted together to the small tick in her jaw, Waverly knew the feelings were genuine. It was obvious the woman couldn't hide her emotions even if she wanted to, and she filed that thought away in the back of her mind. "Protect us from what?"

"We can handle ourselves." Rosita insisted, stepping forward next to the Earp sisters. Something flashed in Nicole's eyes, which Waverly would have missed if she hadn't already been studying her intently. "We've got this." Rosita promised and set a hand firmly on Waverly's shoulder, which incited the look in Nicole's eyes a second time.

"She is quite right." Doc affirmed. "If what our host implies is correct, our companions will be the only waking persons in Purgatory. They need not fear, because every man and beast in this town will be well and fitfully asleep."

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

Moments after our heroes agreed to the sleeping spell, a Purgatory man named Scott Brogan died. A third heart attack ended his life of 67 years, and the Baron sensed Scott's spirit leaking into the Crossroads between. As a professional greeter of the dead, it was his sacred duty to pluck the newly dead from the fringes of life and assist them in their transition to whatever came next. He whisked his hat out of thin air and made himself presentable. His long, spindly legs carried him quickly to where the spirit oozed through as he whistled a jaunty tune. The dapper Baron snapped his fingers and brought an ornately decorated shovel into existence. Ready to dig his newest charge's grave, the air around him froze.

He clutched at the air in confusion. The fluid folds between Life and the Crossroads had seized into something stiff and rigid. Scott's soul lay trapped halfway between the two, and the Baron couldn't get it to budge. Using his otherworldly magics, he moved suddenly to a different location correlating to a patch of land outside the the Ghost River Triangle. He sniffed the air, and found it both pliable and soft. As it should be. He returned to the trouble spot, and found it as immovable as before.

"Aw hell." He cussed, throwing his shovel on the ground. "Some dipshit's gone and messed with time again!" How was he supposed to get any work done?

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

The minutes felt like weeks, and the weeks felt like minutes. It was neither day nor night in Purgatory while everyone slept. The town was cloaked in a hazy grey twilight as drivers leaned over in their seats and joggers lay haphazardly in bushes by the sidewalks. Being on the waking side of the spell was a surreal experience. In the Clockmaker's house, Poppy guided everyone to various guestrooms in which they could sleep. "You'll want to be comfortable." She spoke from experience and recounted an incident where she had once been put under while standing at a counter.

After tucking Wynonna into bed amidst much protest, the youngest Earp wandered back out into the hall and moved towards the last room in the hallway. Where she knew Nicole would be staying. She gently pressed against the door and saw the officer perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. She was partially undressed, uniform shirt thrown over a chair next to her boots and belt, leaving her dressed in a black ribbed tank-top and her work pants. Her hands worried with the edges of her hat. 

"Hey." Waverly called from the doorway. Her heart skipped a beat or two when the redhead looked at her. She smiled nervously, wringing her hands.

"Thank you. For trusting me. I know it couldn't have been easy." Nicole returned her gaze to her hat again.

"The thing is... it is easy. Trusting you." She shrugged. "But I lied today." She laughed. "My coworkers think I'm clearing cows out of a road. And instead, I'm pulling some crazy Sleeping Beauty stunt on the town. It's kinda crazy, and I don't know how to feel about it." The bed creaked, and Nicole looked up. The smaller woman had moved from the door to her side, sitting a hairsbreadth away. "I'm worried." Nicole's voice wavered. "Will you be okay?"

Waverly nodded and fiddled with the pendant hanging from her neck. The tiny grains of sand tinkled back and forth. Nicole reached out and gently grabbed the pendant. Waverly bent slightly to allow for more slack in the cord. The hairsbreadth between them disappeared. "Looks good on you." She murmured, grinning at the flush creeping up the brunette's chest. It was nice to know that there was some physical reciprocation, and Nicole's attraction was not one sided. She wanted to say something witty to draw that redness up to Waverly's cheeks, but she suddenly felt like a sack of potatoes.

Waverly gasped as Nicole's eyes flickered shut and she slumped over into Waverly's lap. Nicole was heavier than she looked, but Waverly took far more time than she needed to move out from under her. The feel of Nicole's face in her lap sent sparks up her spine, the deep breaths of a sleeper blowing gently atop her thighs. Waverly fought the urge to yawn and to curl up next to woman asleep in her lap. She shook her head, as if in a daze, and laid the officer's head down on the pillow at the head of the bed. Waverly couldn't help but run her eyes up and down Nicole's body. She was asleep, so she wouldn't mind. Something in the back of Waverly's mind knew Nicole wouldn't have minded even if she were awake. She bit her lip, wrestling with the warmth that had lodged itself in her chest. Rosita was beautiful, but Nicole? Nicole was different. Scooching closer, Waverly brushed Nicole's hair out of her face. She took a good look at her and silently pledged to check in frequently.

Waverly picked Nicole's hat off the floor and set it down on the nightstand. With a final glance at the redhead from the door, she walked down to meet Jeremy and Rosita. Every bit of her body felt sluggish and the air was thick as molasses. The Sandman grinned from his chair. His eyes were glazed over with a dense fog and an intensity radiated off his skin.

"Tick-tock." He said with a wild grin. She shuddered at the phrase as she remembered one nasty demonic barber.

.o0o. CHAPTER 9 END .o0o.


	10. The Sand of the Clockmaker, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience! I have been working hard on some artwork for my #12DaysofEarpmas project, which sucked up a whole lot of time. I'm nearly finished, and will be done with it by Christmas next week! Once it's complete, I'll be back to writing more frequently. If you want to check out my drawings, I've posted them on Twitter and IG with that same #12DaysofEarpmas hashtag.
> 
> But I know what you're all really here for. A good fanfiction! So without further delay, here is your chapter 10.

"I still can't get over this." Jeremy giggled, tapping on the face of his watch. "We are literally living outside of chronological time right now. Look!" He said, shoving the frozen watch face in his fellow researcher's face. "This still reads the exact time when everything stopped, even though we're experiencing some semblance of existence. It's insane!"

Rosita tossed her clipboard on the table and dragged her hands down her cheeks. "What's insane is that this serum still sucks. This has got to be one of the frustrating things I've ever worked on."

"Do you think we're aging?" Waverly wondered aloud, chewing thoughtfully on the cap of her pen. She was breathing, which meant her bodily functions were occurring as expected, but she hadn't experienced the need to sleep or eat in... weeks? Night hadn't fallen once. For that matter the sun had never risen. The grey haze kept everything on pause in Purgatory.

"From my nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly..."

"Timey-wimey stuff. We get it, Doctor Chetri." She chuckled at the reference, pushing him playfully. "But seriously how long have we been down here?"

"Approximately... 47 Beaver Buzzes." Said Jeremy, estimating the empty cans he had strewn about the lab. "Soon to be 48. Do you ladies want anything?"

"Remember, if you finish them all, there won't be anyone awake to produce any more." Rosita called after him playfully as he jogged up the stairs to raid Shorty's storage room. "I don't know how his heart hasn't exploded yet." Rosita sighed, sidling over to Waverly's side. She leaned on the table with her forearms, absently scanning the notes Waverly had been furiously annotating moments ago. "How's yours?"

A shadow crossed over Waverly's face. She raised a hand and pressed it firmly against her chest, sensing the ache that was always present in the background of her every breath. It was there every day, from the moment she woke to the moment she slept. It was a pain she knew she would feel forever, but it was better to feel pain then to never feel again. For that she was grateful. Grateful that her sister pushed her at the last moment when Willa's eyes lost all humanity. Grateful the bullet meant to take her life missed her heart by millimeters. Grateful to live with the wounds she carried. But her body would never recover fully from the trauma.

"The same." She mumbled, turning slightly towards the other woman. Rosita's hand came to rest atop Waverly's and she squeezed gently. 

"Is there... anything I can do to distract you?" Rosita asked suggestively. She bumped her hips against Waverly's and rested her chin on her shoulder. It was a side of the tough barista Waverly knew few people ever witnessed. Rosita kept her defenses up every moment of the day, guarding herself behind a sharp tongue and a sharper intellect. But something about Waverly Earp brought her guard down without so much as a struggle. When the two met at the hospital months ago, they connected over their experiences of alienation and pain. It was a connection that Mictian thrived on. Waverly hadn't brought it up yet, but she was unsure which parts of their relations were genuine connection versus the demon's lustful desires.

"No..." Waverly shrugged away, shuffling the papers in front of her half-heartedly. "We have a job to do, we can't let anything distract us from why we're here. Everyone took a risk for us to be here." Her thoughts drifted to their sleeping friends. The longer they took finding a solution, the longer everyone else waited. And for reasons she suspected were more than innocent, she was impatient to hear a certain officer's voice again. 

"They're not going anywhere, hon. You know what they say about all work and no play..." She drawled, dragging her eyes down to Waverly's lips. Waverly pointedly turned away and Rosita frowned. "Hey, you've been acting... off. For weeks now. What's wrong?" Waverly wanted to point out that Rosita hadn't ever really experienced who normal Waverly was. They met when Waverly was angrily avoiding Willa's overbearing presence, then came the injuries she sustained at the hands thereof, and shortly afterwards she was possessed by a demon for weeks. Did Rosita think she was 'off' because she was finally on?

"Caffeine!" Jeremy yelled down the stairs, providing Waverly with the perfect excuse to avoid the conversation she knew she needed to have. He stomped noisily down the stairs holding an unopened case of the energy drink in his hands. "It's caffeine!"

"Yes, we can see that, Jeremy." Rosita rolled her eyes. In the presence of another person, she had re-established her safe distance between her and Waverly. Now who's being distant?

"No, you don't understand. Caffeine is the solution. The serum breaks down too fast in Dolls' body because of his super fast metabolism. But caffeine shares molecular similarities to our formula. With the right proportions we can manipulate his body to break down the caffeine first instead of the serum itself! Which means the solution will last long enough in his system to have the desired effects." The two women looked at him and thought over his proposal. It might just work. And if it didn't? Their endless day in Purgatory would continue and they would find another way.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

Bright lights carved the Chicago night sky into small slices of darkness that poked out between the tops of skyscrapers. They flickered by like brilliant camera bulbs as Nicole drove down the city streets. Only she wasn't really driving. She yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, and the car drove steadily on without so much as a hiccup. There was a rustling behind her in the back seat of the cruiser. She knew Will sat in the passenger seat to her right. She knew it was 9:32 in the evening, and at the next stoplight he said...

"You think I enjoy being your mother hen?" She mouthed in unison with her partner. "All right, you know what? I do." Will grinned stupidly from ear to ear. "But don't tell the guys. It'll ruin all my hard earned street cred. Except Diego, he already knows my embarrassing secrets."

"Let me out." Rasped their arrestee in the backseat. Will rapped the steel mesh divider with the back of his knuckles.

"Settle down, tiger."

"Don't do that." Nicole scorned him. Sweat trickled down her spine, pooling in the back of her shirt above her utility belt. "No stop. Why is this... why are we?" She slammed on the brake pedal, but the cruiser kept cruising at the same speed. She turned to her left and tugged at the handle, flicking the safety lock on and off. Nothing budged. Her stomach churned. This was a dream. She should be able to control something, right? 

"Let me out!" Screamed the man, spittle flying through the grate.

"Fucking hell!" Will swore as a fountain of blood gushed out from the steel mesh grating. The red fluid sprayed with the force of a fire hydrant. It quickly flooded the car, and they were up to their knees in the stuff. It kept rising.

"Get out!" Nicole screamed, beating at the windows with her hands and elbows.  _Please don't drown,_  she sobbed,  _not this time. Please don't drown again._

"Out, out damned spot!" Will yelled, frantically rubbing his palms against his blood sodden shirt.

"Let me out, Haught!" Screeched the nightmare from the backseat. She pressed her face against the roof of the car as the blood rose to fill every last crevice. She took a final gasp of air, and suddenly they were out. Out of the car, out of the blood. Nicole stood cleanly clothed behind the processing counter at Chicago's Central Detention Center gripping a sheaf of papers. Without a second thought she threw the papers on the ground and sprinted down the hallway towards the screams.

Gunshots rang out and she ran faster, but she was never fast enough. The door from the emergency room blew open and out a woman fell to the ground screaming and clutching Nicole's gun. The gun she should have been wearing but wasn't. Nicole's run turned into a dead sprint, but the floor tiles stretched interminably like a carnival house of horrors. She would never be fast enough. The rabid man who had been on death's door only moments ago staggered erratically and threw himself on his victim with an unholy shriek. The woman pulled the trigger and fired, one, two, three shots. On the third shot he exploded like a Peep in a microwave.

For a moment there was nothing but silent dread. Then there was movement. The woman on the ground scrabbled to her feet. Black ooze dripped from her white coat like a prehistoric beast emerging from the depths of a tar lake. Something that wasn't Shae leered at Nicole from behind vicious, beetle black eyes.  _Time_ _to wake up now_ , she begged as her wife walked toward her fate.  _Please, if anybody is listening, please let me wake up._

The ax weighed heavy in Nicole's hands.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

"This is it." Jeremy whispered reverently. He peered at one of the dozen glass vials filled with an electric blue liquid. "All our tests worked perfectly. Fingers crossed that this works when he wakes up." The trio spotted the overhanging eaves of the Sandman's house. As Waverly spun the wheel to turn into the driveway, Rosita suddenly grabbed Waverly's arm. Confused, Waverly hit the brakes and brought the vehicle to a lurching halt.

"Don't!" Rosita exhaled sharply. She pointed to the front door, which hung ajar on its hinges. "Someone's in there." 

"Maybe Mr. Apergis wanted some fresh air!" Jeremy suggested hopefully. "He's been cooped up in there long enough, it's understandable."

"No, you saw him." Waverly bit back on the panic that crept up her spine. "There's no way he could walk that far." She could have sworn she saw the curtains move. Waverly threw the car in reverse and parked around the corner and out of sight. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she winced at the pain that rippled across her chest. Almost every person she cared about in this world was in there. She desperately hoped one of them was somehow awake, but in Purgatory, wishful thinking could get a person killed. The trio scurried along the bushes and took care to stay out of sight of the door.

She craned her ears, and could make out voices speaking in angry tones. Then she made out a thud immediately followed by a muffled yell. There was definitely someone, or something, else in the house. And whomever they were, they weren't friendly.

"What do we do?" Jeremy asked in a panic. Before either woman could answer, a sudden deafness fell over their ears. Waverly wanted to open her mouth to speak but found she could not. A voice, sweet and smooth like honey, poured through the silence and coated every nook and cranny with its dulcet tones.

"You're going to walk right through that door like good little boys and girls."

Waverly tried to turn and see the speaker, but couldn't move. She rose to her feet of someone else's accord and from the corner of her eyes she the others rise in unison. In horrified silence, her compliant legs carried her toward the house. The panic welled up inside her. Was this was some sort of hypnotic body control? Nothing but her eyes responded to her frantic attempts to move.

Their captor stayed carefully behind them. Like puppets, they were waltzed through the front door and into the room where Mr. Apergis sat. The sandman's head was bowed, and a terrible gash on his temple dripped blood all over his knees. Two men towered over him. One, a tidy man with slick hair and beady spectacles. The other man was taller by six inches or more. He was a broad-backed brute with black wiry hair. A wild energy bristled beneath his skin, and Waverly was glad his back was turned. Nothing good could be written on a face like that.

"Seymour, look what I found. Three pretty things, wide awake and ever so frisky." Purred the honey-sweet voice. The tidy man turned and looked them up and down like the catch of the day.

"Curious." He studied them carefully over the rims of his glasses. "You've lost your touch, Hypnos. Sloppy really. Unless you've been lying to us..." Seymour tilted Mr. Apergis's head up with the tips of his fingers and stared him straight in the eyes. "...and you have some sand left after all."

"It's not enough for what you want." The sandman gasped, panting heavily. He was clearly suffering. Seymour pondered for a moment, considering his options.

"I'm almost out of juice, what do you want to do?" Asked the puppet-master. Out of juice? Waverly tried desperately to break free of his control, and found she could scrunch her pinky toes. She was shaking.

"Perhaps. But a ten percent solution is better than zero." Seymour's eyes snapped to the brute. "Fetch for me, Forran. While I go treasure-hunting."

The brute turned.

.o0o. CHAPTER 10 END .o0o. 


	11. The Sand of the Clockmaker, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, forgive me for the delay. But fear not! For I come bearing the next chapter in our tale.
> 
> The past three weeks have truly had their way with me. Family and travel had me quite tied up for the holidays, and the New Year insisted I start things off by being dreadfully sick for the first week of it. I was in no state to write or do much other than mope about in bed sneezing my brains out. I am now fully recovered and ready to get back in the saddle!
> 
> Please note I am updating the rating to Mature just to be sure I'm not crossing boundaries with any of the violence I am depicting here. Things are going to start getting gruesome.
> 
> Tell me what you think in the comments! Like it? Hate it? Did you find a typo that I missed? Please let me know, and enjoy!

If it weren't for the overpowered juggernaut following them with menace in every step, Waverly might have taken a moment to appreciate the study. Perhaps she would take pictures and daydream about one day having one just like it. Instead of admiring the beautiful brass handles on the desk drawers and perusing the many interesting titles lining the bookcases, she overturned the desk and heaved the entire bookcase on top of it. The brute was slow as molasses, but moments ago she saw him wrench the staircase railing out of the wall like it was made of pipe-cleaners. Deep down she knew whatever barricade they made wouldn't hold.

At least if she were to die today she would be surrounded by books. Knowing Purgatory, she would probably get trapped as a ghost. There were worse places to haunt as a ghost. A library like this could keep her occupied for a decade at least.

"What do we do?" Jeremy wailed, shoving an ottoman against the door. He pawed at the nearest bookcase and began throwing books furiously into the pile.

"The window, both of you." Rosita ordered. She pulled an iron poker from the fireplace and placed herself resolutely between her friends and the door. "Get on the roof, stay low, and stay quiet. Get to the other side and take cover in the trees."

"No, you're coming with us!" Waverly grabbed Rosita's wrist and tugged her towards the window Jeremy was unlatching. He was already halfway outside. Was Rosita out of her mind? She didn't stand a chance. Those men, no not men... things. They would tear her apart!

"Waverly, go now! I'll buy you..."

The wall exploded like dynamite. The two slammed against the wall like ragdolls. Fragments of varnished wood whistled through the air like spears. The ringing in her ears was terrible. Her eyes wouldn't come into focus, and when they finally did, she wished they hadn't. Legs like tree stumps crushed the pathetic remains of their barricade. The brute was coming right for her. Waverly called Rosita's name, and shook her to run, to escape! But she lay still. Bile rose in her throat when she realized what had happened. The iron poker had run her through.

Doc was wrong, Waverly sobbed as she clambered out the window and leapt to the gutter for dear life. There was nothing worse than dynamite.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

A minute ago Nicole was drowning in nightmare that smothered her in blackness from head to toe. Now, a very pregnant Wynonna shook her violently by the shoulders with crazy, sleep-rimmed eyes. Nicole sighed. Her dream sequence had taken a decidedly different turn, but she welcomed the change in surroundings. She let her eye-lids droop shut, but was interrupted by a slap across the face.

"OW!" She cried, snatching Wynonna's wrists angrily. Wait. This wasn’t a dream? Nicole released Wynonna, realizing this was the waking world. How long had they been asleep? And how on Earth was Wynonna so very pregnant?

"I don't know, and I don't want to talk about it." The Earp woman said abruptly. She clutched a buzzing peacemaker in her hands. “But look! Peacemaker woke me up, like some kind of alarm clock. Something isn’t right, we need to get Doc and find my sister.”

Things could not have gone more wrong. A frantic scrabbling sound came from overhead with muffled voices. Then came a crash that shook the house to its very foundations. The women dashed to the room’s glass doors, threw them open, and peered up from the tiny balcony. Of course they could see nothing, but then they heard a piercing scream.

“Waverly!” They said simultaneously, panic gnawing at their guts. They climbed atop the railings; Nicole put out a hand to help Wynonna keep her balance as she wasn’t used to her new center of gravity; and their chins were finally above the eaves of the house.

Jeremy and Waverly were running along the apex of the rooftop with a behemoth in close pursuit. Their eyes were wide with terror. A monster of a man that seemed to tower 8 feet tall moved with an awful force. He gripped a length of gutter ripped from the side of the roof and brought it down with each step, trying to crush his fleeing prey. What he lacked in speed, he made up for in strength. The roof bowed underneath each terrible crash.

“Alright Haught-shot,” Wynonna growled to Nicole as she braced her elbows on the roof of the house, peace-maker burning a glowing orange in her hands. “Help me send this piece of shit into oblivion.” Nicole had her gun braced and ready. They fired.

Nicole made quick work of the magazine, feeling each bullet find its mark. Wynonna kept firing and a less stressed Nicole would have questioned why she never reloaded a gun that held only six rounds. “It’s not working! It’s like he doesn’t even care.” She yelled, slapping another magazine into her Glock. The monstrosity had rocked back and forth under the rain of bullets, but continued forward with a single-minded intention.

“Knees!” Wynonna yelled back, and they redirected fire. Knees were a much smaller target, and her first three shots missed. Then her fourth shot missed. Jeremy and Waverly had run out of room and teetered on the edge of oblivion. She closed her eyes and prayed to the powers that be that they wouldn’t have to jump. The fifth bullet landed, and immediately after Wynonna made her mark.

The juggernaut flailed. His balance were gone, and both knees had been shattered by lead. He was suddenly unable to move forward on those pulverized joints. He lunged at them as best he could, but they slid to the side and he tumbled over the edge. Wynonna and Nicole exhaled shaky breaths. Jeremy and Waverly turned to their friends and could barely say a word as their throats were raw. Then again no words needed to be said, for they were alive and breathing. But for how long?

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

Rosita had indeed died. Although these monsters could not give her true death, she was no fool. Playing dead in her present condition seemed the best course of action. The one with the honey-sweet voice, whom she had come to learn was called Winslow, had dragged her back down the stairs as the giant brute called Forran chased after her friends. The pain in her abdomen was excruciating as she slammed against each step in the staircase, but she was brave and never made a sound. She even maintained the limpness in her neck as Winslow ripped the sandman’s amulet from her.

“I’ve got it!” He cackled gleefully, and Rosita cracked her eyes to see what was happening. She was thankful for the false eyelashes she wore for they helped to hide her gaze. The one called Seymour stood once more by Mr. Apergis and clutched a sack under his arm.

“Excellent! Call off Forran. We have what we need, and now we’re leaving.” As if on cue, a thundering crash came from the far side of the house. It sounded as if a meteor had struck the earth. Seymour sighed, pinching his eyebrows between his forefinger and thumb. “Clumsy idiot… Why did you let him on the roof, Winslow? No matter, fetch him would you?” Winslow obeyed, and skipped from the house wearing his prize like an Olympic medal.

“You can’t do this.” Mr. Apergis rasped. “You will fail…”

“Oh but we won’t.” Seymour laughed, taunting the tortured man. “Because we destroyed the only ones who could oppose us centuries ago. This time we will succeed! And by ‘we’ I do mean all of us.”

“Luvart’s been busy, you see. One by one, he’s been pulling us through the Hell rifts that Earp-girl has been opening all over the place willy-nilly. Quite stupid, that gun of hers. It frays the fabric between worlds faster than acid eats through skin!” With that statement the sandman let out a horrible scream. Rosita could not see, but she knew that Seymour was demonstrating the effects of acid on skin for dramatic effect.

“But imagine, all of us Furies together at last!” He said, shaking with glee as the sandman writhed in his clutches. “It’s been too long, a reunion is really overdue. This sand of yours will help the last of my brethren rise. It’s such a pity you’ll have to miss it. Somewhere deep down, I know you still like watching the world burn. Perhaps I’ll leave you here with your own? It’s packs all the punch, only it's fun-sized.” The sound could only be described as a roiling bubble, and was punctuated by footsteps as Seymour the Fury walked out the door with pep in his step.

Rosita could not hold back a shudder as she listened to the screams. Although her eyes were screwed shut against the sandman’s suffering, she could not blot the horrible screams of pain out of her head. The next few minutes stretched an eternity, but as soon as she believed the coast to be clear, she began to count in her mind.

_One_. She gripped the iron spike in her stomach. _Two_. She took a deep breath. _Three_. She wrenched the iron spike from her stomach. _Four_. She cried from the pain. _Five_. She tucked her elbows and knees beneath her torso. _Six_. She splayed her hands on the ground and dry heaved. _Seven_. She felt her guts knitting together. _Eight_. She pushed herself to her feet. _Nine._ She opened her eyes and looked at the suffering sandman. A quarter of his body was consumed by a hissing acid that was slowly dissolving him while alive. _Ten_. She brandished the iron in her hand and resolved to put the poor creature out of his misery.

As she approached his screaming stopped, although he continued to writhe in agony. He looked at her, his eyes filled with madness. The acid defied gravity and crawled steadily upwards, eating at edge his collarbone. He cast his eyes about the room then stopped and seemed to look right through her. She hesitated and followed his gaze. At the bottom of the stairwell stood her companions. All but one pair of eyes were directed at Hypnos and his hideous fate. The last pair were Waverly’s, and they beheld Rosita with shock and fear. The young Earp girl’s skin paled to ash.

Knowing this was last audience he would ever entertain, Hypnos uttered these last words with incredible poise for a dying man. “The thing with broken clocks… is you can always tell exactly when they stopped ticking.” He finally drew Waverly’s eyes, and he looked at her with a terrible intensity. “With people it isn't so easy. Sometimes you can't even tell they're broken." Then acid reached his throat and his eyes locked squarely with Rosita’s.

“Do it.”

Rosita obliged, plunging the iron poker deep into his skull.

.o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. .o0o. 

As Hypnos died, the sleeping spell which trapped the town into a deep slumber lifted. Baron Samedi felt the wheels of time begin churning once more, and he extricated Scott Brogan’s spirit from the now pliable stuff that separated the land of the Living from the Crossroads. Poor Scott had gotten more than a bit addled during his predicament of being trapped between worlds. Too dead to sleep with the living, but too alive to properly comprehend that he had died. The Baron smartly executed his duties as professional greeter of the dead, but Scott could hardly understand his lefts from his rights at that point.

After several minutes of miscommunication, the Baron lifted one spindly leg and kicked Scott squarely in the behind to start him on the path to whatever nonexistence or hereafter was in store for the spirit. The Baron grumbled, in a foul mood from the encounter and the events in general. Spirits everywhere in the Ghost River Triangle Precinct had gotten themselves stuck all over. The time magic had not stopped their deaths, but had fouled up their transitions after death. The Baron had a lot of catch up work to do, and he was not amused. There would be lost souls wandering the Crossroads uninstructed for weeks, not knowing which path was theirs to take.

“You damned well know I’d love a drink right about now,” The Baron cursed at the man with the white, walrus mustache, standing several meters behind him, “but I’d rather be struck mortal than accept libations from the likes of you.”

“Suit yourself.” The walrus mustache chuckled, pulling at a fine scotch from his flask. “You’d be less miserable if you’d just accept that I’m here to stay.” The Baron guffawed, jamming his hat over his eyes at a rakish angle.

“Well I’ve seen to that, you old bastard. See, I may have done something rash several weeks ago. Agreements were made with some unsavory sorts so I can put you down for good. Mark my words, you twat, I will have your grave dug and the consequences be damned!”

“My my, such language, Baron! Here I thought we were finally becoming friends.” The mustache laughed and smacked his lips. He took another sip of scotch and tucked away his flask into his coat pocket. “Time is a funny thing, Baron! I wouldn’t keep waiting if I were you.” The mustache called after the retreating Loa.

The Loa didn’t look back, but instead shouted a spiteful string of curses into the air. Oh, how he hated that man! He would give up smoking cigars if only for the opportunity to bury him neck deep in the dirt and rip that hideous, walrus mustache from his smirking face.

.o0o. CHAPTER 11 END .o0o. 


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